Literature From the 1920's
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Some great authors from the 1920's were Langston Hughes, Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway. Their writings are still appreciated today .They were as famous in the 1920's as they are today. Read more about them below.
Langston Hughes
James Langston Hughes was greatly influential author during the 1920’s. Hughes came from a highly appreciated African American family. When he brought up his first thoughts in being a poet his father rejected it saying that he wouldn’t be successful in that career.
His first published poem was also one of his most famous, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", and it appeared in Brownie's Book. Later, his poems, short plays, essays and short stories appeared in the NAACP publication Crisis Magazine, Opportunity Magazine, and other publications.
One of Hughes' finest essays appeared in the Nation in 1926, entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain". It spoke of black writers and poets, who spoke for racial rights, where a talented black writer would prefer to be considered a poet, not a black poet, which to Hughes meant he subconsciously wanted to write like a white poet. Hughes argued, "no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself.
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Robert Frost
Robert Frost was an excelling poet during his life and during the 1920’s too. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, but never earned a formal degree.
Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper, The Independent.
Though his work is associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a traditional poet, he used modern ways of writing, he was a diverse poet. Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died on January 29, 1963, in Boston. He will be remembered as a great American Poet that gave us a taste of his literature.
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Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway is known today as a famous writer who began his long career in the 1920’s. He wrote many novels and books and most of them became famous. Most of his books are based on his experiences during events, such as the civil war in Spain for one of his books, "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
In 1921 through 1926, Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris and in 1921, he married Hadley Richardson. In 1923, he wrote "Three Stories and Ten Poems" and his son John was born.
In 1926, Ernest Hemingway wrote his first important novel, "The Sun Also Rises". It was published the same year with another novel, "The Torrents of Spring". They were both published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. In 1927, he published a short story collection called "Men without Women". That same year, he divorced with his wife, Hadley Richardson, and married Pauline Pfieffer. In 1928, he had two more children. He also wrote "A Farewell to Arms", but his father also committed suicide. This year, he also wrote "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
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