The Lost Generation is the demographic cohort that reached early adulthood during World War I, and preceded the Greatest Generation. The social generation is generally defined as people born from 1883 to 1900, coming of age in either the 1900s or the 1910s. The term is also particularly used to refer to a group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s. Gertrude Stein is credited with coining the term, and it was subsequently popularised by Ernest Hemingway, who used it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises: "You are all a lost generation." "Lost" in this context refers to the "disoriented, wandering, directionless" spirit of many of the war's survivors in the early postwar period.
Family in Queensland pictured at home (circa 1900)
The Child's Bath by Mary Cassatt from 1893 of a woman giving a child a wash. The link between hygiene and good health was becoming better understood in Western society by the end of the 19th century and frequent bathing had become common.
Class photo taken at a school in Sweden (1900)
Children playing with toys (c. 1890s)
The Greatest Generation, also known as the G.I. Generation and the World War II Generation, is the demographic cohort following the Lost Generation and preceding the Silent Generation. The social generation is generally defined as people born from 1901 to 1927. They were shaped by the Great Depression and were the primary generation composing the enlisted forces in World War II. Most people of the Greatest Generation are the parents of the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers, and, in turn, are the children of the Lost Generation.
Buckler family, 1914
Portrait of Australian female children, circa between 1910 and 1920
American G.I.s land on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944
A woman working in a military aircraft factory in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1942. Millions of American women found work in the defense industry during the war.
