As we approach the year 2020, its hard to believe that iconic era of the 1920s is now a century ago. We look back on this decade as an age of striking social and political change. Due to changes in technology and the economy, Americans were connected to one another and the rest of the world in ways they hadn’t been before, and a common culture emerged with regard to music and dance. Many books from the 1920s reflect these changing customs and attitudes, and many authors and artists had the ability to come together in unprecedented ways to exchange ideas. Although published posthumously, Ernest Hemingway‘s memoir, A Moveable Feast, details many of the personal accounts, observations, and stories of  the authors of this time, including John Dos Passos, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and more.

Hemingway’s book, The Sun Also Rises, is also based on real people in Hemingway’s circle, and the action is based on real events. Hemingway presents his notion that the generation that survived World War I were resilient and strong instead of decadent and damaged, as they were often being portrayed. Below is the iconic first edition dust jacket of The Sun Also Rises.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered by many to be the most iconic author of the era. Books such as The Great Gatsby personify and perhaps exaggerate the lifestyle of the time. The dust jacket on the first edition may be one of the most recognizable and quintessential of the era. It is interesting to note that beautiful dust jackets really only started becoming fashionable in the 1920’s. Although the first dust jacket has been reported as early as the 1820’s, most were just used to protect the beautiful bindings and were often thrown away since owners naturally wanted to show off their books in their libraries. As printing techniques improved, publishers in the 20’s started to emphasize the jacket art instead of the bindings and the bindings themselves became rather unimpressive.

Some other iconic 20’s Fitzgerald titles include Flappers and Philosophers and This Side of Paradise. Here are a few first editions we have had in their original dust jackets.

Another of our favorite Fitzgerald jackets is from the first edition of Tales of the Jazz Age, which contains some of his better-known short stories such as, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.

This dust jacket was designed by John Held Jr, who also designed the cover for many other books and magazines of the age. He designed the cover of the first edition of Emily Post’s How to Behave Though a Debutante, as pictured below.

As we look back at this era, we can appreciate the seemingly care free attitude and simplicity of the time. The people were grateful to survived the first major world war and they lived life to the fullest. May we bring some of that spirit into the year 2020.