It is a tern regularly used after the First World War in reference to the host of young men who were killed in it, and also to the young men who survived and who thereafter were adrift-morally and spiritually. The term is believed to have been invented by Gertrude Stein (1874—1946). The mood of the lost-generation, a mood of disenchantment and sometimes cynicism, was well represented by some American novelists; particularly Scott Fitzgerald. The group of men who later came to be known as the ‘war poets’ also belonged to the lost generation.