American Jazz Age Literature

American Jazz Age Literature was a favourite of mine when I was in my teens/early twenties. I suppose I was drawn to the Flappers of Nineteen Twenties as they romanticized (and mirrored) the excitement and slight fear that accompanies the fleeting days of the fresh & new freedom of adulthood. I read a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age novels during that time in my life.

The Don CeSar Hotel at St. Pete Beach, Florida happened to be a favourite of the Fitzgeralds.

The Don CeSar has an opulent history of hosting Jazz Age Parties that included the Fitzgerald’s (F. Scott & Zelda).

A walk through the hotel and along the beach feels as though one might suddenly enter a time warp and find them self in the “Roaring Twenties.”

Standing beside the original pool, I could picture a Gatsby style party with F. Scott in a tuxedo and Flappers in glittery, beaded gowns jumping into the pool, champagne glasses in hand.

The Don Cesar has a majestic beach front location on St. Pete Beach. The beach, set along the Gulf Coast of Mexico, is where periwinkle sky meets turquoise water and soft, buttercup yellow trails of sunlight illuminate ecru sands.

The water is still wild with oceanic life: dolphins feed along the shore while skinny-legged sea birds dart in and out of the waves.

Dolphin, St.Pete Beach, Florida, Mix Hart

The scary thing about researching American Jazz Age Literature is that there are so few published women novelists from the era. I know there were a lot of women writing novels, just very few managed to get published. The Flapper writers still had a long way to go for equality.

If you’re in a Gatsby mood, and fancy a little holiday, pick up a Jazz age novel from the list below and plant yourself in a deck chair at the Don CeSar to read it.

Here is my list of American Jazz Age novels that I have either read or would like to read. I am almost finished Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (though, Hemingway’s obsession with bull fighting and the minuscule role of the only woman in the novel are hard to wrap my brain around).