Lost Generation

The "Lost Generation" is a term used to describe a number of American writers and artists who went to live in Europe after the First World War. People associated with the Lost Generation include Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson and John Steinbeck.

The term has also been used more recently to describe those unable to find work after the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

Origin of the term

The writer and poet Gertrude Stein is often considered to have come up with the term She supposedly heard her French garage owner speak of his unskilled young workers as "une generation perdue" (a generation lost). Ernest Hemingway then used the term in the introduction to his novel The Sun Also Rises.

The term is generally used for the period from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Great Depression.

Meaning

After the First World War, members of the Lost Generation decided that they did not want to live a normal life in America. They went to Europe, often Paris. Away from America, the Lost Generation often drank heavily, had affairs and tried to find meaning in life. The Lost Generation produced some of the finest writing of all time, and arguably created a new style of writing.

Lost Generation Media

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  Family in Queensland pictured at home (circa 1900)

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  Class photo taken at a school in Sweden (1900)

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  Scene from Lady of the Lake (Vitagraph film, 1912)

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  A young woman burning a cable for scrap at a shipbuilding yard in Glasgow during World War I.

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  Image taken from a magazine cover (published 1924) of a couple dressed in fashionable clothing of the period.

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  Weapons training for members of the Volkssturm, a militia all German men not already in military service up to the age of sixty were obliged to join in the final months of World War II.

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  Gertrude Stein with Ernest Hemingway's son Jack in 1924. Stein is credited with bringing the term "Lost Generation" into use.