Final answer:
Critics of industrialization like Edward Bellamy, Henry George, and Thorstein Veblen expressed skepticism about the direction of American society, while romantic writers and the Lost Generation offered sharp critiques of the impacts on nature and human life.
Step-by-step explanation:
Novelists and intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries voiced substantial criticisms of the industrial age through their works. Edward Bellamy, Henry George, and Thorstein Veblen were among the theorists who questioned the trajectory of American society amidst rapid industrial growth. Their works suggested that industrialization was a misguided step potentially leading the country away from a more ideal path.
Romanticism emerged as a substantial cultural movement that critiqued the adverse impacts of industrialization on nature and humans. William Blake, a romantic poet, famously criticized England's industrial factories as "dark satanic mills." Romantics championed the beauty of nature and lamented its destruction due to urban and industrial development.
During the early 1900s, notable writers from the Lost Generation -- including Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Edith Wharton -- depicted a profound disillusionment with the industrial age and middle-class America. Lewis, for instance, won a Nobel Prize for his portrayal of American life as stifling in his work 'Babbitt', while Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' exposed the negative aspects of the high society.
The literature of the era often highlighted the grim reality of life in industrial cities, with overcrowded housing, pollution, and rampant disease. Critics like Sinclair Lewis and Edith Wharton expressed their critique by satirizing the middle class and lamenting the loss of previous societal norms. Their pieces often reflected the contrasting ideologies of their time, bringing attention to the hypocrisy and excesses that accompanied industrialization and urbanization.