The period between the two World Wars was perhaps the most exciting and productive time in the history of the American novel. As America took on a leading role in world affairs, its literature began to assume a new importance. This DLB volumes historical context includes two decades that each had a characteristic influence on the literature it produced. The 1920s attempts at a return to normalcy following World War I, were anything but normal -- witness the Roaring 20s, the Jazz Age. The 1930s, the time of the Great Depression, saw a return to a literature concerned with social justice. While widely disparate, both decades are consistent in the brilliance of the novels produced during this astonishing literary period.
85 entries include: Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, James Gould Cozzens, John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Nathanael West, Edith Wharton and Thomas Wolfe.