The early 1900s is a continuation - with men dominating, and the women being mostly upper class but not wealthy. Wharton is rich (the phrase keeping up with th

The early 1900s is a continuation - with men dominating, and the women being mostly upper class but not wealthy. Wharton is rich (the phrase keeping up with the Joneses comes from her family), Woolf and Gertrude Stein are well-off and McCullers & Plath a bit less so. Harper Lee's father was a lawyer, and she's a one-hit wonder. Toni Morrison was not rich... The vast majority of men - who dominate (not the women) - are not from well-off families: Steinbeck, Orwell, Sinclair, Tolkein, Fitzgerald, Lewis Carroll, Tennessee Williams, D.H Lawrence, Jack London (who claimed to be poor but wasn't), Kerouac, Vonnegut. Stephen King and Stan Lee were arguably poor. Hemingway, Salinger, Conrad, Roald Dahl, and Joseph Heller are not from wealth, but definitely not poor. Frank L Baum was wealthy, similar to Melville & Hugo - Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and Jane Austen - but less so than Tolstoy.