"Pleasant Places With Congenial Companions": Depictions of College Student Life in Early 20th-Century Fiction

• In Event: Interrogating Sources: History of Education From Fact and Fiction

Abstract

Scholars interested in college student life who seek a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the college experience will find much to augment their research in the pages of collegiate fiction. Examining stories set in the world of higher education yields valuable insights for interpreting and contextualizing both historic and contemporary phenomena. Such is the case when contemplating four novels published between 1912 and 1933: Owen Johnson’s Stover at Yale (1912), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920), Percy Marks’ The Plastic Age (1924) and George Anthony Weller’s Not to Eat, Not for Love (1933). Collectively, these works share common themes that shed light on what college student life was like in the early twentieth century.

Author

• David M. Brown, University of Kentucky