What Made 1922 a Literary Watershed Year?

The year 1922 isn’t especially remembered as a year of major significance (it wasn’t a presidential election year, for one thing), but it was a momentous year in history nonetheless. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed after five years of civil war. Gandhi was sentenced to prison in India by the British. The first successful treatment of diabetes with insulin was reported in Canada. The BBC was formed in the UK. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated. Reader’s Digest was launched, and soon became the most popular magazine in America. And speaking of civil war, one erupted in Ireland.

In literature, 1922 is now considered to have witnessed a revolution in fiction and poetry. More than a decade later, the writer Willa Cather called 1922 “the year the world broke in two,” and that sentiment has been borrowed for the title of one of two recent books on what happened in the literary world that year. – events that still affect literature almost 100 years later.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.