This 1922 short story, ‘Winter Dreams’, encapsulates the Jazz Age. With themes of unrequited love and self-made success, F. Scott Fitzgerald used this elegiac short story as the basis for his masterful novel The Great Gatsby (1925).

Dexter Green is the son of a middle-class grocery store owner. To earn money, he starts working as a golf caddie and it is on the golf course that he meets the beautiful socialite Judy Jones. Several years later, after Dexter has graduated college and become a self-made financial success, he and Judy are reunited. Their turbulent romance begins and Dexter is given many opportunities to change the course of his life.

‘Winter Dreams’ was first published in Metropolitan magazine in 1922 before being collected in All the Sad Young Men (1926). Like much of Fitzgerald’s work, the story highlights the financial extravagance and eventual disillusionment of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald’s characters are self-serving and, as a result, often regret their choices and long to recover their lost youth. Commenting on the frivolity of the upper class, Fitzgerald drew from his own experiences to breathe life into this realistic short story, which later became the basis for The Great Gatsby (1925).

This volume has been republished in a beautiful new edition, featuring an introductory essay on Jazz Age literature. Not to be missed by fans of The Great Gatsby, Winter Dreams would make the perfect addition to the bookshelves of fans of Fitzgerald’s work.