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: