The Short Stories (Scribner Classics) - Hardcover

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684842505 ISBN 13: 9780684842509

Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD, 1998

Synopsis

Today, F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for his novels, but in his lifetime, his fame stemmed from his prolific achievement as one of America's most gifted (and best-paid) writers of stories and novellas. In The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli, the country's premier Fitzgerald scholar and biographer, assembles a sparkling collection that encompasses the full scope of Fitzgerald's short fiction. The forty-three masterpieces range from early stories that capture the fashion of the times to later ones written after the author's fabled crack-up, which are sober reflections on his own youthful excesses. Included are classic novellas, such as "The Rich Boy," "May Day," and "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," as well as a remarkable body of work he wrote for the Saturday Evening Post and its sister "slicks." These stories can be read as an autobiographical journal of a great writer's career, an experience deepened by the illuminating introductory headnotes that Matthew Bruccoli has written for each story, placing it in its literary and biographical context.
Together, these forty-three stories compose a vivid picture of a lost era, but their brilliance is timeless. As Malcolm Cowley once wrote, "Fitzgerald remains an exemplar and archetype, but not of the 1920s alone; in the end he represents the human spirit in one of its permanent forms." This essential collection is ample testament to that statement, and a monument to the genius of one of the great voices in the history of American literature.

About this title

Review:

"One pleasure of rereading Fitzgerald's stories now is to rediscover just how good some of them in fact are, and how brilliant a handful." -- Jay McInerney, "The New York Review of Books"

"Bruccoli gives [us]...a virtually new and vastly amplified Fitzgerald." -- Joseph Coates, "Chicago Tribune"

"More than enough to re-establish Fitzgerald as a master of the American short story." -- Mark Caldwell, "The Philadelphia Inquirer"

"This is a valuable collection, whether one reads the stories to delight in Fitzgerald's style, to conjure up a lost era, to learn more about the career of a great American novelist, or simply to gain insight into the human condition." -- Leonard A. Podis, "The Cleveland Plain Dealer"

About the Author:

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald's masterpieces include The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald's fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0684842505
• ISBN 13: 9780684842509
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 800