Dictionary of Literary Biography

American literature was in a state of flux between the first and second World Wars-the social upheavals of the postwar decade and the superb fiction to which they gave birth have made this the most consistently scrutinized of any period in American literary history. Those authors most closely identified with the modernist spirit in fiction discovered methods of protest deeply rooted in the literary imagination. Radical changes in language, style and structure that mark the literature...
More Description

American literature was in a state of flux between the first and second World Wars-the social upheavals of the postwar decade and the superb fiction to which they gave birth have made this the most consistently scrutinized of any period in American literary history. Those authors most closely identified with the modernist spirit in fiction discovered methods of protest deeply rooted in the literary imagination. Radical changes in language, style and structure that mark the literature represented by the writers profiled in this DLB volume helped to reshape and redefine the contours of the American short story.25 entries include: Sherwood Anderson, Erskine Caldwell, James T. Farrell, Edna Ferber, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ben Hecht, Langston Hughes, Fannie Hurst, Ring Lardner, Dorothy Parker, Damon Runyon, William Saroyan and Gertrude Stein.