Published on Apr 01, 1998 | 400 Pages
Introduction by Hortense Calisher
Commentary by Edmund Wilson, Henry Seidel Canby, and Arthur Mizener
Fitzgerald’s second novel, a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age, is a largely autobiographical depiction of a glamorous, reckless Manhattan couple and their spectacular spiral into tragedy. Published on the heels of This Side of Paradise, the story of the Harvard-educated aesthete Anthony Patch and his willful wife, Gloria, is propelled by Fitzgerald’s intense romantic imagination and demonstrates an increased technical and emotional maturity. The Beautiful and Damned is at once a gripping morality tale, a rueful meditation on love, marriage, and money, and an acute social document. As Hortense Calisher observes in her Introduction, “Though Fitzgerald can entrance with stories so joyfully youthful they appear to be safe—when he cuts himself, you will bleed.”
Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide
Author
F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald was considered the quintessential author of the Jazz Age. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896, Fitzgerald attended Princeton University, where he began to write seriously. After joining the U.S. Army in 1917, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre, whom he later married. In 1920, Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, transformed Fitzgerald overnight into a literary sensation. The Great Gatsby followed in 1925, although it was not as popular at the time as his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned. Fitzgerald died in 1940 of a heart attack. He was forty-four years old.
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