When did Modernist literature become most closely associated with literary history?

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Gertrude Stein, 1935 — Modernist literature American writer Gertrude Stein was a self-styled genius who coined the term *Lost Generation* for a younger coterie of her fellow Modernist writers.

Although some prewar works by authors such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad are considered Modernist, Modernism as a literary movement is most closely associated with the period following World War I.12

The unprecedented scale of destruction and carnage during the war undermined faith in the foundations of Western society and culture. Consequently, postwar Modernist literature became defined by a pervasive sense of disillusionment and fragmentation, as writers sought an authentic response to a world that had been fundamentally altered. This era produced seminal works that challenged traditional narrative continuity and required active reader interpretation, such as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) and James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922).12