When "The Sun Also Rises" appeared in 1926, it immediately established Ernest Hemingway as the preeminent writer of his generation. The poignantly beautiful story of a group of American and English expatriates on a sojourn from Paris to Pamplona, it represents a dramatic step forward trom Hemingway's narrative achievement in "In Our Time". Hemingway is at the peak of his artistic powers in his vivid depiction of the Left Bank of Paris during the twenties, and in his brutally realistic description of bullfighting in Spain. His understanding of character also reveals a profound, new maturity. The flamboyant Lady Brett Ashley and the hapless Jake Barnes emerge from their hopelessly romantic relationship as representatives of an age - of moral bankruptcy and spiritual dissolution, or unrealized love and vanishing illusions - the "lost generation" of which Gertrude Stein spoke. Hemingway's second novel - and in his opinion the most successful - "The Sun Also Rises" confirmed the belief that he would be the "big man in American letters", as Allen Tate wrote at the time. It now stands as one of the classics of modernist fiction.