The Beautiful and Damned
Hard Cover. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922. First Edition. Very Good.
First edition, second printing, first state with Scribner seal to copyright page. Publisher's green cloth with titles blindstamped to front board, and titles stamped in gilt to spine. Very good, with bottom of front board lightly bumped, light rubbing to spine ends, and a few small closed tears to bottom edges of front matter. Overall, an attractive and clean copy. Bruccoli A8.1.b. Considered one of the author's most accomplished works, The Beautiful and Damned is Fitzgerald's second novel, based on his relationship with his wife Zelda. The plot features the young New York socialites, Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert, who epitomize the archetypal Bright Young Things of the café society during the Jazz Age. In the novel, Patch, a Princeton graduate awaiting his wealthy grandfather's sizable fortune, decides to wait for his inheritance rather than pursue a career. The couple partakes in wild parties, and "their lives deteriorate into mindless alcoholic ennui." Upon recognizing his grandson's lack of ambition, Patch's grandfather ultimately disowns his grandson, causing Patch and Gloria to sink further into alcoholic depression and grow apart from one another. While the events and characters of the novel are based on Fitzgerald's own life with Zelda, The Beautiful and Damned is also an allegory for the disenchanted Lost Generation in the wake of WWI.
Item #FSF136
Price: $300.00
