Born in the fall of 1896, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald’s struggles in love, work, and fame became the fundamental motifs and themes of his novels. Despite the losses he suffered, the success of his novels in the years following his early death immortalized his legacy as one of the greatest American authors of all time.

Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, displayed a sophisticated cynicism masking keen psychological insight and sensitivity to the falseness of the ideals of the so-called “jazz era” in America, following World War 1. He continued to write on this theme in two volumes of short stories, Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age. With the publication of The Great Gatsby, the story of a gross and ostentatious man who gained immense material success but who destroyed himself and those around him in the process, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s full powers as a novelist were revealed; he was ranked by many critics as one of the pre-eminent American writers. In his later writings, as exemplified by the short story collections All the Sad Young Men and Taps at Reveille, and the novel Tender is the Night, his central theme shifted to what he deemed the inevitable corruption of the individual by the blind crassness of modern society.

First edition of Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise.

With an initial printing of only 3,000 copies, Fitzgerald’s first novel This Side of Paradise sold out in just three days. This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It takes its title from a line of Rupert Brooke’s poem Tiare Tahiti, the book examines the lives and morality of post–World War I youth. The novel’s hero, Amory Blaine, is a handsome, spoiled young man who attends Princeton, becomes involved in literary activities and has several ill-fated romances. A portrait of the Lost Generation, the novel addresses Fitzgerald’s later theme of love distorted by social climbing and greed” (Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature). Fitzgerald was still at university when he submitted the manuscript, then titled The Romantic Egoist, to Charles Scribner, whom he had known at Princeton. It was published on 26 March 1920, was an immediate success, and launched Fitzgerald’s literary career. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper with a full page inscription, “For William Henneman with best wishes – this old old book; the sight of it reminds me, all too dramaticly [sic], that I’m almost forty. F. Scott Fitzgerald Spring 1936.”  A unique example displaying Fitzgerald’s thoughts about his early writing.

First edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, was a pivotal book in his career. A trenchant satire of the Jazz Age, it is very much a novel of its times. It tells the story of Anthony Patch, his relationship with his wife Gloria, his service in the army, and his alcoholism. The novel provides an excellent portrait of the Eastern elite as the Jazz Age begins its ascent, engulfing all classes into what would soon be known as the Café Society

Rare first edition, first printing of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

In 1922, Fitzgerald announced his decision to write “something new–something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald’s finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author’s generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Cyril Connolly called The Great Gatsby one of the half dozen best American novels: “Gatsby remains a prose poem of delight and sadness which has by now introduced two generations to the romance of America, as Huckleberry Finn and Leaves of Grass introduced those before it” (Modern Movement 48).

Consistently gaining popularity after World War II, the novel became an important part of American high school curricula. Today it is widely considered to be a literary classic and a contender for the title “Great American Novel”. In 1998, the Modern Library editorial board voted it the 20th century’s best American novel and second best English-language novel of the same time period. It was the basis for numerous stage and film adaptations. Gatsby had four film adaptations, with two exceptionally big-budget versions: the 1974 version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, as well as Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 version starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carrie Mulligan. Fitzgerald’s granddaughter praised Lurhmann’s adaptation, stating “Scott would be proud.”

First edition issue points of The Great Gatsby : “chatter” on p. 60, line 16, “northern” on p. 119, line 22, “it’s” on p. 165, line 16, “away” on p. 165, line 29, “sick in tired” on p. 205, lines 9-10, and “Union Street station” on p. 211, lines 7-8, and the lowercase “j” in “jay Gatsby” on the back panel, hand-corrected in ink. It is one of the most difficult dust jackets to find.

Inscribed first edition of Fitzgerald’s most popular novel, The Great Gatsby.

Fitzgerald’s greatest success, The Great Gatsby, remains one of the most highly sought after books in the genre of modern literature. The first edition, second printingabove is inscribed by Fitzgerald on the front free endpaper, “With the Pleasant memories of La Paix behind me alas and alack! Souvenir of 1932–1933 for M.T. from her – at least from one who was almost made to feel like – a guest. F. Scott Fitzgerald.” The recipient, Margaret Turnbull, who with her husband Bayard owned La Paix, a 28–acre estate with a large Victorian house near Towson, Maryland. The Fitzgeralds rented La Paix from the Turnbulls in 1932 and 1933 because of its proximity to the Phipps Clinic, the psychiatric branch of Johns Hopkins, where Zelda was being treated. This is also where Fitzgerald finished work on his second masterpiece, Tender is the Night.

The Turnbulls lived nearby in another house on the estate; while Bayard Turnbull disapproved of Fitzgerald, his wife Martha shared an interest in literature with him and became a good friend of him. According to her son, at their first dinner together “Fitzgerald grew heated on the subject of Thomas Wolfe and left the table to get his copy of ‘Look Homeward, Angel’, which he insisted my mother take with her and read at once… Out of such treads their friendship was woven. Each time they met here was a carry–over from the previous meeting – something to discuss that seemed of vital importance… He was constantly lending my mother books: Proust, D.H. Lawrence, Hemingway, Rilke, the diary of Otto Braun… My mother became for a brief season a listener to and therefore a sharer of his thoughts” (Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, pp. 221–240). It was Margaret Turnbull who introduced Fitzgerald to T.S. Eliot when the poet was staying with her family while lecturing at Johns Hopkins on the Metaphysical Poets. Bruccoli A11.1.b; Connolly, The Modern Movement 48.

First edition of Tender is the Night, which Fitzgerald considered to be his finest work. Lengthily inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For the unknown, unmet parents of Clare (note: double underlined). Knowing her, I hope you will find something to like in this present. Best wishes, F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a friend’s copy of Tender Is the Night, “If you liked The Great Gatsby, for God’s sake read this. Gatsby was a tour de force but this is a confession of faith.” Set in the South of France in the decade after World War I, Tender Is the Night is the story of a brilliant and magnetic psychiatrist named Dick Diver; the bewitching, wealthy, and dangerously unstable mental patient, Nicole, who becomes his wife; and the beautiful, harrowing ten-year pas de deux they act out along the border between sanity and madness. Tender Is the Night is also the most intensely, even painfully, autobiographical of Fitzgerald’s novels; it smolders with a dark, bitter vitality because it is so utterly true.

This account of a caring man who disintegrates under the twin strains of his wife’s derangement and a lifestyle that gnaws away at his sense of moral values offers an authorial cri de coeur, while Dick Diver’s downward spiral into alcoholic dissolution is an eerie portent of Fitzgerald’s own fate. F. Scott Fitzgerald put his soul into Tender Is the Night, and the novel’s lack of commercial success upon its initial publication in 1934 shattered him. He would die six years later without having published another novel, and without knowing that Tender Is the Night would come to be seen as perhaps his masterpiece. In Mabel Dodge Luhan’s words, it raised him to the heights of “a modern Orpheus.” Named by Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century. It was basis for the 1962 film directed by Henry King starring Jennifer Jones and Jason Robards. The soundtrack featured a song, also called Tender Is the Night, by Sammy Fain (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics), which was nominated for the 1962 Academy Award for Best Song. Robards won the 1962 NBR Award for his performances in Tender Is the Night and Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

First edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Flappers and Philosophers

Fitzgerald followed up his smash debut novel, This Side of Paradise, with this 1920 collection of short stories, Flappers and Philosophers. It marked his entry into the realm of the short story, in which he proved himself “a master of the mechanism of short story technique” (Boston Transcript). Several of his most beloved tales are represented in this collection of eight, including “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” and “Head and Shoulders,” with their particularly O. Henry­like twists; the poignant “Benediction” and “The Cut-Glass Bowl”; and “The Offshore Pirate,” the octet’s opening and most romantic story.

First edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age; in the scarce original dust jacket

Fitzgerald’s second collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age, was divided into three separate parts, according to subject matter, it includes one of his better-known short stories, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. All of the stories had been published earlier, independently, in either Metropolitan Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, Smart Set, Collier’s, Chicago Sunday Tribune, or Vanity Fair.

First edition, first issue of Fitzgerald’s third collection of short stories

Fitzgerald’s third collection of short stories, All the Sad Young Men, was published by Scribner’s in February 1926. Upon publication—and somewhat belying the notion that Fitzgerald’s most famous novel had not been enthusiastically received—the New York Times wrote, “The publication of this volume of short stories might easily have been an anti-climax after the perfection and success of ‘The Great Gatsby’ of last Spring. A novel so widely praised — by people whose recognition counts — is stiff competition. It is even something of a problem for a reviewer to find new and different words to properly grace the occasion. It must be said that the collection as a whole is not sustained to the high excellence of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ but it has stories of fine insight and finished craft.”

First edition of Fitzgerald’s Taps at Reveille.

A collection of 18 short stories, Taps at Reveille was the final collection of short stories Fitzgerald published in 1935. He chose for inclusion in this volume what he considered his best short stories from the previous decade, The Freshest Boy, Crazy Sunday, and Babylon Revisited being more popular. Edith Walton considered Babylon Revisited, “probably the most mature and substantial story in the book. A rueful farewell to the Jazz Age, its setting is Paris and its tone one of anguish for past follies.” In 1954, the short story was cinematized by MGM and starred Elizabeth Taylor and Roger Moore’s as his Hollywood debut. The Oscar winning title song, by Jerome Kern, featured first in Lady Be Good (1941) but it was popularized by its play in this beloved drama. Consequently, Taps at Reveille both sheds light on the literary and cinematic climate of the decade and provides insight into some of Fitzgerald’s final publications. Fitzgerald dedicated Taps at Reveille to his literary agent Harold Ober, who worked also for writers of Walton’s status – J.D. Salinger and William Faulkner.

First edition set of Fitzgerald’s complete works; finely bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery

In addition to the rare first editions featured above, our collection currently includes the rare complete first edition collection of  the Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery above. View our complete collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald here.