Significant Literature of the 1920s & 30s
The 1920s and 30s were a period of dramatic change, which is vividly reflected in many literary masterpieces written by giants of the twentieth century. This reading list includes works by many authors who shaped and transformed the decade. The below listing is by no means a complete catalogue of important literature of the period; if your favorite is missing, or if you would like to recommend an addition, please let us know below. Click the grey arrows to the right of each section to see the titles and covers for important literary works.
1920
Women in Love
By
D. H. Lawrence

Age of Innocence
By
Edith Wharton

Main Street
By
Sinclair Lewis

This Side of Paradise
By
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Chéri
By
Colette

Beyond the Pleasure Principle
By
Sigmund Freud

1921
Six Characters in Search of an Author
By
Luigi Pirandello

The Outline of History
By
H. G. Wells

Crome Yellow
By
Aldous Huxley

Howard’s End
By
E. M. Forster

1922
The Waste Land
By
T. S. Eliot

Babbitt
By
Sinclair Lewis

Etiquette
By
Emily Post

The Meaning
of Relativity
By
Albert Einstein

Siddhartha
By
Hermann Hesse

The Painted Veil
By
Somerset Maugham

The Enormous Room
By
E. E. Cummings

1923
Saint Joan
By
George Bernard Shaw

Towards a New Architecture
By
Le Corbusier

The Prophet
By
Khalil Gibran

1924
Billy Budd (posthumous)
By
Herman Melville

The Magic Mountain
By
Thomas Mann

Judgment and Reasoning in the Child
By
Jean Piaget

So Big
By
Edna Ferber

A Passage to India
By
M. Forster

Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair
By
Pablo Neruda

1925
The Great Gatsby
By
F. Scott Fitzgerald

An American Tragedy
By
Theodore Dreiser

Mrs. Dalloway
By
Virginia Woolf

Arrowsmith
By
Sinclair Lewis

The Trial
By
Franz Kafka

Mein Kampf
By
Adolf Hitler

The Making of Americans
By
Gertrude Stein

1926
The Sun Also Rises
By
Ernest Hemingway

The Weary Blues
By
Langston Hughes

Winnie-the-Pooh
By
A. A. Milne

Show Boat
By
Edna Ferber

1927
To the Lighthouse
By
Virginia Woolf

Bridge of
San Luis Rey
By
Thornton Wilder

Death Comes for the Archbishop
By
Willa Cather

Elmer Gantry
By
Sinclair Lewis

1928
Point
Counter Point
By
Aldous Huxley

Coming of Age in Samoa
By
Margaret Mead

Lady Chatterly’s Lover
By
H. Lawrence

The Threepenny Opera
By
Bertolt Brecht

Orlando
By
Virginia Woolf

1929
The Sound and the Fury
By
William Faulkner

A Farewell to Arms
By
Ernest Hemingway

All Quiet on the Western Front
By
Erich Maria Remarque

Look Homeward, Angel
By
Thomas Wolfe

Big Blond and Other Stories
By
Dorothy Parker

1930
Nancy Drew: Secret of the Old Clock
By
Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

As I Lay Dying
By
William Faulkner

The Maltese Falcon
By
Dashiell Hammett

Civilization and Its Discontents
By
Sigmund Freud

1931
The Good Earth
By
Pearl S. Buck

Mourning Becomes Electra
By
Eugene O’Neill

My Fight for
Birth Control
By
Margaret Sanger

The Joy of Cooking
By
Irma Rombauer

1932
Brave New World
By
Aldous Huxley

Death in the Afternoon
By
Ernest Hemingway

Tobacco Road
By
Erskine Caldwell

Light in August
By
William Faulkner

1933
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
By
Gertrude Stein

The Shape of Things to Come
By
H. G. Wells

Lost Horizon
By
James Hilton

Miss Lonelyhearts
By
Nathanael West

1934
Murder on the Orient Express
By
Agatha Christie

Appointment in Samarra
By
John O’Hara

Tender is the Night
By
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tropic of Cancer
By
Henry Miller

The Postman Always Rings Twice
By
James M. Cain

Call It Sleep
By
Henry Roth

1935
It Can’t Happen Here
By
Sinclair Lewis

Of Time and the River
By
Thomas Wolfe

The African Queen
By
C. S. Forester

Murder in the Cathedral
By
T. S. Eliot

1936
Absalom! Absalom!
By
William Faulkner

In Dubious Battle
By
John Steinbeck

How to Win Friends and Influence People
By
Dale Carnegie

Gone with the Wind
By
Margaret Mitchell

1937
Out of Africa
By
Isak Dinesen

Of Mice
and Men
By
John Steinbeck

Death on the Nile
By
Agatha Christie

The Hobbit
By
J. R. Tolkien

Their Eyes Were Watching God
By
Nora Neale Hurston

1938
Scoop
By
Evelyn Waugh

Homage to Catalonia
By
George Orwell

Our Town
By
Thornton Wilder

Rebecca
By
Daphne du Maurier

1939
The Grapes of Wrath
By
John Steinbeck

The Day of the Locust
By
Nathanael West

Finnegans Wake
By
James Joyce

The Big Sleep
By
Raymond Chandler

1940
Native Son
By
Richard Wright

The Little Prince
By
Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
By
Carson McCullers

For Whom the Bell Tolls
By
Ernest Hemingway

Darkness at Noon
By
Arthur Koestler

The Power and the Glory
By
Graham Greene

Share Your Thoughts . . .
We are always eager to hear from our members and value the contributions of fellow Deco enthusiasts. We would be thrilled to hear which important literary works you think should be added to this list! Share your recomendations through the form below: