F. Scott Fitzgerald Collection – serie

Unique collection of short storiesA Hollywood hack who has fallen on hard times since the end of the Silent Era, Pat Hobby spends his time hanging out in the studio lot attempting to devise schemes – such as pressing his secretary for blackmail material against a studio executive – to get more work and earn on-screen credits. Oblivious to his own shortcomings and filled with feelings of self-importance, he embarks on a course towards ever-increasing humiliation, suffering setbacks on both the professional and romantic fronts.A vivid account of Hollywood and its politics and hierarchies, these stories – which draw from Fitzgerald’s own travails as a screenwriter – were first printed in Esquire, although they were written with a view to being published as a cohesive volume.

This Side of Paradise charts the life of Amory Blaine, an ambitious young man loosely based on Fitzgerald himself, as he moves from his well-heeled Midwest home to study at Princeton and then starts frequenting the circles of high society as an aspiring writer. Experiencing failure and frustration in love and in his career, Blaine finds his youthful enthusiasm gradually giving way to disillusionment, cynicism and a life of dissolution. A critical account of its own era, introducing many themes which would be developed in later works, Fitzgerald’s first novel was an instant critical and commercial success, propelling him into the limelight as a literary celebrity.

Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the neighbouring cottage, is intrigued by the mysterious host, Jay Gatsby, a flamboyant but reserved self-made man with murky business interests and a shadowy past. As the two men strike up an unlikely friendship, details of Gatsby’s impossible love for amarried woman emerge, until events spiral into tragedy. Regarded as Fitzgerald’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of American literature, The Great Gatsby is a vivid chronicle of the excesses and decadence of the Jazz Age, as well as a timeless cautionary critique of the American dream.

While holidaying at a villa on the French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver, a wealthy American couple, meet the young film star Rosemary Hoyt. Her arrival causes a stir in their social circle and exposes the cracks in their fragile marriage. As their relationship unravels, glimpses of their troubled past emerge, and a series of disturbing events unfolds. Peopled by an unforgettable cast of aristocrats and high-fliers, Tender Is the Night is at once a scathing critique of the materialism and hypocrisy of the Roaring Twenties and a poignant and sensitive account of personal tragedy and disillusionment.

Published a year after The Great Gatsby, this short-story collection showcases many of the celebrated novel’s themes, as well as its unique writing style. Two of the most famous tales, the beautifully elegiac ‘The Rich Boy’ and ‘Winter Dreams’, deal with wealthy protagonists – the old-money Anson Hunter and the self-made man Dexter Green – as they come to terms with lost love, while ‘Absolution’, in which a boy confesses to a priest, was initially written as a background piece to The Great Gatsby. Also containing ‘The Baby Party’, ‘Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr–nce of W–les’, ‘The Adjuster’, ‘Hot and Cold Blood’, ‘The Sensible Thing’ and ‘Gretchen’s Forty Winks’ – all of which describe in various ways the 1920s society that Fitzgerald himself inhabited – All the Sad Young Men is a masterpiece of twentieth-century American fiction.

A collection of early short stories which helped make Fitzgerald’s name, Tales of the Jazz Age combines period pieces – the most notable of which is the novella-length ‘May Day’ – with more fanciful creations, such as the fantastical ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, recently made into a Hollywood film. Also containing the now classic story ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’, as well as lesser-known sketches and tales, this diverse selection, compiled by Fitzgerald himself from material published in newspapers and magazines, showcases both the variety of his writing and early examples of the themes and characters which would find their way into his later novels.

Monroe Stahr is a film producer at the height of his career, revered by the industry and in control of every aspect of his business empire. In his ruthless rise to the top, the young widower has had little time for sentiment, until he mets the beguiling Kathleen Moore and the two embark on an intense but ill-fated relationship. Told in parts from the perspective of Cecelia Brady, the witty and perceptive daughter of Stahr's business partner, The Last Tycoon is a sophisticated, gripping tale of love and intrigue in the Golden Age of Hollywood, containing what many critics have claimed are Fitzgerald's most modern and engaging chracters.

Basil and Josephine charts the coming of age of two privileged youths from quiet Midwestern towns, Basil Duke Lee and Josephine Perry – based on Fitzgerald himself and a combination of his first love Ginevra King and his wife Zelda. As one struggles to gain the acceptance of his peers and becomes consumed by ambition, the other finds herself obsessed by teenage crushes and has to confront the pitfalls of popularity.Written for the Saturday Evening Post while the author was working on Tender Is the Night, these stories form a realistic and entertaining portrait of two young adults in the 1910s, fascinating both for the autobiographical insights they provide and the timeless satire that Fitzgerald’s fiction has become synonymous with.

Published soon after Fitzgerald’s debut novel This Side of Paradise, Flappers and Philosophers was the author’s first collection of short fiction, a form through which he had gained notoriety in newspapers and magazines. The familiar themes of aspiration and social satire already permeate his writing: in ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’ the fashionable Marjorie attempts to turn her dowdy cousin into a debutante, before betraying her out of jealousy, while ‘The Ice Palace’ features a Southern belle whose engagement to a Northerner finds her confronted with a cultural clash between tradition and modernity.Also containing ‘The Offshore Pirate’, ‘Head and Shoulders’, ‘The Cut-Glass Bowl’, ‘Benediction’, ‘Dalyrimple Goes Wrong’ and ‘The Four Fists’, this volume of stories illustrates the early stages of Fitzgerald’s development as a writer and provides an entertaining chronicle of America in the 1910s.

Unique collection of short storiesSet in the year after the 1929 crash and incorporating many autobiographical elements, ‘Babylon Revisited’ tells the story of the widower Charlie Wales, a reformed alcoholic and successful businessman returning to Paris to convince his in-laws to give him back the daughter he abandoned. As the old haunts of the city he used to carouse in seem more and more alien to him, he finds himself assailed by feelings of guilt and regret.Considered one of Fitzgerald’s finest and most poignant pieces of short fiction, 'Babylon Revisited’ is presented here with a selection of other tales published in the same period, such as ‘Crazy Sunday’ – an account of alcoholism and infidelity in Hollywood – which showcase the author at his creative best.

Inspired by Fitzgerald’s own courtship of his future wife Zelda, ‘The Last of the Belles’ centres on the Southern beauty Ailie Calhoun from Tarleton, Georgia, who finds herself the object of attention of all the officers at a nearby army base, including the narrator, Andy. A wistful and melancholy exploration of unfulfilled dreams and lost youth, the story is considered one of Fitzgerald’s finest pieces of short fiction.This volume also includes other acclaimed stories – such as ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, ‘The Swimmers’ and ‘The Bridal Party’ – written by Fitzgerald between 1927 and 1931, during the prolonged period in which he was struggling to compose Tender Is the Night.

Unique collection of short storiesA young Harvard graduate with bright prospects, Bill Frothington is invited on board a steamer hosting a high-school dance, where he meets and falls in love with the seventeen-year-old Mae. As the match is not considered socially advantageous enough, Bill moves on, marries and has a career, but he remains painfully nostalgic for that episode on the river.A poignant tale which touches on the themes of yearning and lost youth that are central to many of Fitzgerald’s novels and stories, ‘The Love Boat’ is here presented with other lesser-known pieces which he wrote in the 1920s and explore the many facets of his creative talents.

Unique collection of short storiesWhen Tudy’s first husband tragically dies, she takes up the offer of Tom, a family friend, to pay for her to go to study in France. After she and her benefactor become close, she agrees to marry him in Provence later that year. But as the wedding approaches, Tom discovers that his fiancée has become involved with Riccard, a dashing French pilot and his near-double.A tale of broken trust and infidelity based on Zelda Fitzgerald’s own dalliance with a French pilot, ‘Image on the Heart’ is here presented with other lesser-known stories written by Fitzgerald in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which develop many of the themes found in his novels and his more famous works of short fiction.

Unique collection of short storiesSara, the American wife of a French aristocrat, has had two encounters with her compatriot Cedric Killian, one a youthful idyll in North Carolina and the other during the First World War, when he was a soldier about to go to battle. When, years later and after the death of her husband, Cedric contacts her out of the blue, Sara finds herself eager to see him again – against the wishes of her in-laws – and to find out the secret of this man she loves yet knows so little about.A poignant tale of thwarted love, ‘The Intimate Strangers’ explores many of Fitzgerald’s favourite themes, such as the constraints of society on romance and the American fascination for Old Europe. This volume also includes other lesser-known stories he wrote from the mid-1930s until the end of his life, revealing new facets to the author of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night.

Compiled and published after Fitzgerald’s death by his friend, the prominent critic and editor Edmund Wilson, The Crack-Up is a collection of writings that chronicle the author’s state of mind and personal perspective on events, fellow writers and public figures of the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to articles and essays such as the celebrated title piece, this volume includes a selection of Fitzgerald’s notebooks, which – as well as being a repository of anecdotes and witty lines – provide a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the novelist’s creative process, with passages that would be reworked into his fiction.An entertaining and eclectic miscellany that sheds light on the author and his times, The Crack-Up is an invaluable companion to such well-known works as The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night.