Called the Lost Generation, American writers who went to Paris after World War I were rebels against social and political conservatism in the United States. They saw Paris as a cultural center and as a place where they could find an audience for their literary experiments -- experiments that changed the course of American writing in the 20th century. This group is the focus of this DLB volume. They form a coherent age group that contributed a chapter, and an important one, to the history of American letters, writes one of their peers, Malcolm Cowley, in the volume's foreword. It was during their heyday, and partly because of their efforts, that American writing ceased to be regarded as a provincial activity...and was recognized by the world for its inherent qualities.
99 entries include: Margaret Anderson, Sherwood Anderson, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney, Sylvia Beach, Stephen Vincent, Benet Malcolm Cowley, Henry and Caresse Crosby, e.e.cummings, Hilda Doolittle, John Dos Passos, F. ScottFitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder.