The Lost Generation in 1920s Paris: How Glamorous Was It Really?

Cobblestones. Cafes. The smell of baguettes hits you as you walk into a warm boulangerie on a rainy morning. An open notebook on a chequered tablecloth, an old-style pen, and a café au lait at the ready. Paris in April. They even wrote a song about it. Paris is probably the most pre-imagined city on earth, and the so-called Lost Generation, the writers and artists who flooded here after the First World War, wrote a version of the city that most of us still carry with us. Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast was the book that launched a thousand tote bags. But that version of 1920s Paris with its champagne, café feuds, and glamorised poverty (trust funds and inheritances conveniently hidden) is only one man’s memories, written down and romanticised decades after the fact. In this episode of By Their Own Compass, we take a look at three writers who were all in Paris at the same time, but writing about three different cities. Jean Rhys was a writer from Dominica. Later, she would become famous for her 1966 classic, Wide Sargasso Sea, but in 1920s Paris, she was a struggling writer with little money and a husband in a French prison. George Orwell was there, too. Washing dishes at a fancy hotel and scraping by in a rundown hotel just 500 metres from where Hemingway lived. We trace their haunts from the Place de la Contrescarpe to Montparnasse, from Jean Rhys’ beautifully evocative Left Bank and Other Stories to Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, whose stories of crowded, profane kitchens would be among the inspirations for Anthony Bourdain and his famous book Kitchen Confidential. And we offer a Paris travel guide for those on their way to France or just dreaming of a trip. Sarah and Jeremiah walk you from the Latin Quarter to the Luxembourg Gardens. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bytheirowncompass.substack.com/subscribe