Save Me The Waltz.

FITZGERALD, Zelda.

$28,000.00

Item Number: 137264

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932.

First edition of Zelda Fitzgerald’s only novel, a semi-autobiographical account of her life and marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Octavo, original cloth. Laid in is a card with an original gouache painting of a flower painted by Fitzgerald and signed by her with her initials, “Z S.F.” Zelda began painting while on holiday in Rome and Capri with Scott in 1924, where they received the proofs of The Great Gatsby. In 1932, while being treated at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, she had a burst of creativity which produced Save Me the Waltz as well as the beginnings of a small body of work that would be produced in and out of sanatoriums over the course of the next decade. Some of her works were exhibited in 1934 to disappointing reviews. The New Yorker described them merely as “Paintings by the almost mythical Zelda Fitzgerald; with whatever emotional overtones or associations may remain from the so-called Jazz Age.” No actual description of the paintings was provided in the review. As with Save Me The Waltz, Zelda’s paintings have seen a critical reappraisal, particularly with the publication of Nancy Milford’s 1970 biography, Zelda. A review of a contemporary exhibition by curator Everl Adair noted the influence of Vincent van Gogh and Georgia O’Keeffe on her paintings and concluded that her surviving corpus of art “represents the work of a talented, visionary woman who rose above tremendous odds to create a fascinating body of work—one that inspires us to celebrate the life that might have been” (Adair, Everl (Spring 2005), “The Art of Zelda Fitzgerald”, Alabama Heritage, University of Alabama, no. 76). Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. The signed painted card measures 6 inches by 4.5 inches and is in fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco and folding chemise slipcase.

In 1932, while being treated at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Zelda had a burst of creativity. Over the course of her first six weeks at the clinic, she wrote an entire novel and sent it to Scott's publisher, Maxwell Perkins. When Scott finally read Zelda's book, a week after she'd sent it to Perkins, he was furious. The book was a semi-autobiographical account of the Fitzgeralds' marriage. In letters, Scott berated her and fumed that the novel had drawn upon the autobiographical material that he planned to use in Tender Is the Night, which he'd been working on for years, and which would finally see publication in 1934. Scott forced Zelda to revise the novel, removing the parts that drew on shared material he wished to use. Scribner agreed to publish her book, and a printing of 3,010 copies was released on October 7, 1932. Although panned at the time of publication, the novel, alongside Zelda's artwork, has undergone a reassessment beginning with Nancy Mitford's 1970 biography Zelda. Michiko Kakutani wrote in 1991, "Zelda Fitzgerald succeeded, in this novel, in conveying her own heroic desperation to succeed at something of her own, and she also managed to distinguish herself as a writer with, as Edmund Wilson once said of her husband, a 'gift for turning language into something iridescent and surprising.'"