Paris in the 1920s

A postwar cultural milieu in which writers, artists, and expatriates gathered in Paris, reshaping modernist literature, visual art, and nightlife.

Ernest Hemingway: An American novelist and journalist whose early fiction and memoir drew on his years in Paris. His Paris years, later recalled in A Moveable Feast, became an emblem of expatriate literary life.
Shakespeare and Company: An English-language bookshop and lending library founded in Paris by Sylvia Beach. The shop supported visiting writers and published Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922.
Lost Generation: A label for writers who came of age during World War I and its aftermath, especially expatriates in Europe. The phrase came to represent the American writers who clustered in postwar Paris.
Modernism: A broad cultural movement that challenged inherited forms and conventions in art, literature, and architecture. Paris’s interwar circles became a major meeting point for modernist practitioners and ideas.
Gertrude Stein: An American writer and art collector who hosted a influential literary and artistic circle in Paris. Her salons linked expatriate writers with avant-garde painters, including Picasso.
La Rotonde: A café in Montparnasse that became a gathering place for artists and writers. Its tables and surrounding cafés formed a social infrastructure for the expatriate art scene.
World War I: A global war fought from 1914 to 1918, involving the major powers of Europe and beyond. The war’s aftermath shaped expatriate movement and the disillusionment associated with the period.
The Harlem Renaissance in Paris: The presence and reception of Black American artists and performers in interwar Paris. Parisian venues amplified performers such as Josephine Baker while reflecting contemporary racial hierarchies.
James Joyce: An Irish modernist writer whose works include Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Paris offered Joyce publishers and supporters during the years surrounding Ulysses’s publication.
A Moveable Feast: Ernest Hemingway’s posthumously published memoir of his early years in Paris. Its recollections shaped later popular images of the city’s literary expatriates.

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