List of English-language first and second generation modernist writers
Encyclopedia
List of English-language first and second generation modernist writer
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Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
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- Richard AldingtonRichard AldingtonRichard Aldington , born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...
- Djuna BarnesDjuna BarnesDjuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...
- Samuel BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
- Earle BirneyEarle BirneyEarle Alfred Birney, OC, FRSC was a distinguished Canadian poet and novelist, who twice won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top literary honor, for his poetry.-Life:...
- Kay BoyleKay BoyleKay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
- Basil BuntingBasil BuntingBasil Cheesman Bunting was a significant British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of Briggflatts in 1966. He had a lifelong interest in music that led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry, particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud...
- Brian CoffeyBrian CoffeyBrian Coffey was an Irish poet and publisher. His work was informed by his Catholicism and by his background in science and philosophy, and his connection to surrealism. For these reasons, he is seen as being closer to an intellectual European Catholic tradition than to mainstream Irish Catholic...
- E. E. CummingsE. E. CummingsEdward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
- Denis DevlinDenis DevlinDenis Devlin was, along with Samuel Beckett and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish modernist poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. He was also a career diplomat.-Early life and studies:...
- John Dos PassosJohn Dos PassosJohn Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
- Lawrence DurrellLawrence DurrellLawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
- T. S. EliotT. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
- Ralph EllisonRalph EllisonRalph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...
- William FaulknerWilliam FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
- F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
- F. S. FlintF. S. FlintFrank Stuart Flint was an English poet and translator who was a prominent member of the Imagist group. Ford Madox Ford called him "one of the greatest men and one of the beautiful spirits of the country"....
- Ford Madox FordFord Madox FordFord Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
- H.D.H.D.H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...
- Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
- David JonesDavid Jones (poet)David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was...
- James JoyceJames JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
- A.M. Klein
- Wyndham LewisWyndham LewisPercy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
- Dorothy LivesayDorothy LivesayDorothy Kathleen May Livesay, was a Canadian poet who twice won the Governor General`s Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada" during the 1970s and 1980s.-Life:...
- Amy LowellAmy LowellAmy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.- Personal life:...
- Mina LoyMina LoyMina Loy born Mina Gertrude Löwry was an artist, poet, playwright, novelist, Futurist, actress, Christian Scientist, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She was one of the last of the first generation modernists to achieve posthumous recognition. Her poetry was admired by T. S...
- Robert McAlmonRobert McAlmonRobert Menzies McAlmon was an American author, poet and publisher.-Life:McAlmon was born in Clifton, Kansas, the youngest of ten children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister....
- Hugh MacDiarmidHugh MacDiarmidHugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
- Thomas MacGreevyThomas MacGreevyThomas MacGreevy was a pivotal figure in the history of Irish literary modernism. A poet, he was also director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950 to 1963 and served on the first Irish Arts Council .-Early life:MacGreevy was born in County Kerry, the son of a policeman and a primary...
- Marianne MooreMarianne MooreMarianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...
- Lorine NiedeckerLorine NiedeckerLorine Faith Niedecker was a Wisconsin poet and the only woman associated with the Objectivist poets...
- Charles OlsonCharles OlsonCharles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...
- Flann O'BrienFlann O'BrienBrian O'Nolan was an Irish novelist, playwright and satirist regarded as a key figure in postmodern literature. Best known for novels such as At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman and An Béal Bocht and many satirical columns in The Irish Times Brian O'Nolan (5 October 1911 – 1 April 1966) was...
- Mary Devenport O'NeillMary Devenport O'NeillMary Devenport O'Neill was an Irish poet and dramatist and a friend and colleague of W. B. Yeats, George Russell,and Austin Clarke....
- George OppenGeorge OppenGeorge Oppen was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism, and later moved to Mexico to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee...
- Ezra PoundEzra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
- Carl RakosiCarl RakosiCarl Rakosi was the last surviving member of the original group of poets who were given the rubric Objectivist. He was still publishing and performing his poetry well into his 90s.-Early life:...
- James ReaneyJames ReaneyJames Crerar Reaney was an influential Canadian poet, playwright, librettist, and professor, "whose works transform small-town Ontario life into the realm of dream and symbol."...
- Kenneth RexrothKenneth RexrothKenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...
- Charles ReznikoffCharles ReznikoffCharles Reznikoff was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined. When asked by Harriet Munroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, Louis Zukofsky provided his essay Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of...
- Jean RhysJean RhysJean Rhys , born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a mid 20th-century novelist from Dominica. Educated from the age of 16 in Great Britain, she is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea , written as a "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.-Early life:Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica...
- Dorothy RichardsonDorothy RichardsonDorothy Miller Richardson was a British author and journalist.-Biography:Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873. Her family moved to Worthing, West Sussex in 1880 and then Putney, London in 1883...
- J.D. Salinger
- Blanaid SalkeldBlanaid SalkeldBlanaid Salkeld was an Irish poet, dramatist, and actor, whose well-known literary salon was attended by, among others, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien...
- F.R. Scott
- A.J.M. Smith
- Gary SotoGary SotoGary Soto is a Mexican-American author and poet.Mexican-American parents Manuel and Angie Soto . In his youth, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley and in factories in Fresno. Gary's father died in 1957, when he was just five years old...
- Gertrude SteinGertrude SteinGertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
- Wallace StevensWallace StevensWallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
- Dylan ThomasDylan ThomasDylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
- Rebecca WestRebecca WestCicely Isabel Fairfield , known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public...
- William Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
- Virginia WoolfVirginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
- W.B. Yeats
- Louis ZukofskyLouis ZukofskyLouis Zukofsky was an American poet. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Life:...