Curated playlist
Lost Generation writers
- F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940 believing his work was forgotten. The Great Gatsby later sold millions.
- J. R. R. TolkienOn his 21st birthday, Tolkien proposed by letter to a woman who was already engaged.
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
- C. S. LewisC. S. Lewis died the same afternoon President Kennedy was shot. His death was almost swallowed by the news from Dallas.
- Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf's father let her read whatever she liked in his vast library.
- William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner never told his daughter he had won the Nobel Prize. She heard it when the principal called her in.
- John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck once stole bacon from a produce market to survive. He later won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Ezra PoundEzra Pound cut T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land by about half. Eliot called the edits proof of Pound's critical genius.
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died the same day as John F. Kennedy, and almost nobody noticed. C. S. Lewis died that afternoon too.
- Edmund WilsonCritic Edmund Wilson mailed strangers a postcard listing over two dozen things he would not do.
- Louis-Ferdinand CélineManuscripts of French novelist Céline, missing since 1944, were handed to police in March 2020.