No Answers

In his monumental study, The Auden Generation, Samuel Hynes conducts a carefully guided tour through England’s misplaced generation of the Thirties—the writers and intellectuals who were too young to participate in the First World War and too disillusioned to participate in the Second. Hynes, a careful, meticulous scholar, patiently sorts through the novels, poems, reviews, periodicals, and literary fads of the period. The result is a masterly account of the contradictions surrounding the generation whose creativity had to contend with the tragic circus of the Thirties: the Depression, Hitler’s seizure of power, the revolution in Spain, Mussolini’s assault upon Abyssinia, and Germany’s fateful invasion of Poland.

The English writers who came of age during the Thirties were caught in a series of paradoxes. They were eager for social reform, yet helplessly middle-class. They tried to forget the past, yet were unwilling to imagine the future. They were attentive to current events, yet strove to say something of permanent value. Hynes presents these complexities with wit, accuracy, and insight in this long-awaited and much-needed book.

JB

About the Author

John R. Boly

In his monumental study, The Auden Generation, Samuel Hynes conducts a carefully guided tour through England’s misplaced generation of the Thirties—the writers and intellectuals who were too young to participate in the First World War and too disillusioned to participate in the Second. Hynes, a careful, meticulous scholar, patiently sorts through the novels, poems, reviews, periodicals, and literary fads of the period. The result is a masterly account of the contradictions surrounding the generation whose creativity had to contend with the tragic circus of the Thirties: the Depression, Hitler’s seizure of power, the revolution in Spain, Mussolini’s assault upon Abyssinia, and Germany’s fateful invasion of Poland.

The English writers who came of age during the Thirties were caught in a series of paradoxes. They were eager for social reform, yet helplessly middle-class. They tried to forget the past, yet were unwilling to imagine the future. They were attentive to current events, yet strove to say something of permanent value. Hynes presents these complexities with wit, accuracy, and insight in this long-awaited and much-needed book.