Members of the Lost Generation, American writers and artists who lived in Paris during the 1920s, continue to occupy an important place in our literary history. Rebelling against increased commercialism and the ebb of cosmopolitan society in early twentieth-century America, they rejected the culture of what Ernest Hemingway called a place of “broad lawns and narrow minds.” Much of what we know about these iconic literary figures comes from their own published letters and essays, revealing how adroitly they developed their own reputations by controlling the reception of their work. Surprisingly the literary world has paid less attention to their autobiographies. In Writing the Lost Generation, Craig Monk unlocks a series of neglected texts while reinvigorating our reading of more familiar ones. Well-known autobiographies by Malcolm Cowley, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein are joined here by works from a variety of lesser-known—but still important—expatriate American writers, including Sylvia Beach, Alfred Kreymborg, Samuel Putnam, and Harold Stearns. By bringing together the self-reflective works of the Lost Generation and probing the ways the writers portrayed themselves, Monk provides an exciting and comprehensive overview of modernist expatriates from the United States.

John W. Aldridge is one of the few young critics of importance to appear on the literary scene since World War II. In AFTER THE LOST GENERATION he discusses with acumen and discernment the most important works of the young post-war writers of the Forties—Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, John Horne Burns, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Paul Bowles, Alfred Hayes and others. Aldridge discusses three writers of the 1920’s—Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald—to introduce the writers of World War II. He draws significant parallels between the work of the two generations—between Hemingway and Hayes, between Fitzgerald and Burns, between Bowles and Hemingway, and between the “lost generation” of the Twenties and the “illusionless lads of the Forties.” More important than the likenesses between the two generations are the new developments. Norman Mailer and Irwin Shaw wrote enormous “encyclopedic” war novels which covered whole armies and had settings in a dozen different lands. John Horne Burns sought relief from the chaos of modernity in Italian culture and Old World tradition. Truman Capote dealt essentially with abnormalities and peculiarities in human nature. Anti-Semitism, the Negro problem, and homosexuality appear time and again in the new writing. The old themes with which Hemingway and Fitzgerald shattered Victorian patterns—sex, drinking, the brutalities of war—are no longer shocking. AFTER THE LOST GENERATION is a penetrating analysis of post-war fiction that already has provoked wide controversy and discussion. “A pioneer study...The first serious and challenging book about the new novelists.”—Malcolm Cowley, New York Herald Tribune

Noel Riley Fitch has written a perfect book, full to the brim with literary history, correct and whole-hearted both in statement and in implication. She makes me feel and remember a good many things that happened before and after my time. I'm glad to have lived long enough to read it. --Glenway Wescott

Unlock the more straightforward side of Tender is the Night with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which tells the story of a charming young American couple, Dick and Nicole Diver, and the teenaged film star Rosemary Holt, who becomes close to the couple and eventually embarks on an affair with Dick. Behind the glamourous façade of their existence in Europe, the couple are beset by a host of problems, including intractable mental illness, alcoholism and a growing sense of disillusionment. Fitzgerald is best known for his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, and is widely regarded as one of the foremost chroniclers of the Jazz Age in the USA. Find out everything you need to know about Tender is the Night in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!

From the renowned author of Invisible Man, a classic, “elegant” (The New York Times) collection of essays that captures the breadth and complexity of his insights into racial identity, jazz and folklore, and citizenship across six decades. Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan, this definitive volume includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as “a body of cogent and subtle commentary on the questions that focus on race,” and Going to the Territory (1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that Black Americans lead. With newly discovered essays and speeches, The Collected Essays reveals a more vulnerable, intimate side of Ellison than what we've previously seen. “Raph Ellison,” wrote Stanley Crouch, “reached across race, religion, class and sex to make us all Americans.”

An incisive study of modern American literature, casting new light on its origins and themes. Exploring canonical American writers such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner alongside less familiar writers like Djuna Barnes and Susan Glaspell, the guide takes readers though a diverse literary landscape. It considers how the rise of the American metropolis contributed to the growth of American modernism; and also examines the ways in which regional writers responded to an accelerated American modernity. Taking in African American modernism, cultural and geographical exile, as well as developments in modern American drama, the guide introduces readers to current critical trends in modernist studies.

Class is back in session! The Bedside Baccalaureate is the ultimate miscellany series for smarties: it speaks directly to people’s desire for a better education and eagerness for a fun, no-pressure “college-like” experience. Every volume lets readers enroll in the courses they wish they had taken years ago—or studied more closely than they did. This new collection builds on the knowledge imparted in the first book, with the curriculum ranging from Origins of Human Society and Italian Renaissance Art to Schools of Buddhist Thought and Game Theory. To enhance learning, the back matter contains bibliographies with suggestions for further study. Filled with color illustrations, The Bedside Baccalaureate: Second Semester is an entertaining package for the up-and-coming intellectual.

Volume 6 of The Cambridge History of American Literature explores the emergence and flowering of modernism in the United States. David Minter provides a cultural history of the American novel from the 'lyric years' to World War I, through post-World War I disillusionment, to the consolidation of the Left in response to the mire of the Great Depression. Rafia Zafar tells the story of the Harlem Renaissance, detailing the artistic accomplishments of such diverse figures as Zora Neal Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, and Richard Wright. Werner Sollors examines canonical texts as well as popular magazines and hitherto unknown immigrant writing from the period. Taken together these narratives cover the entire range of literary prose written in the first half of the twentieth century, offering a model of literary history for our times, focusing as they do on the intricate interplay between text and context.