25 books
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1. F. Scott Fitzgerald: Complete Works
Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and short-story writer. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four collections of short stories, and 164 short stories. Although he temporarily achieved popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald only received wide critical and popular acclaim after his death. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald was born in Minnesota, but was primarily raised in New York. He attended Princeton University, but due to a failed relationship and a preoccupation with writing, he dropped out in 1917 to join the army. In the 1920s, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he was influenced by the modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, particularly Ernest Hemingway. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him into the New York City elite. To maintain his lifestyle during this time, he also wrote several stories for magazines. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), was inspired by his rise to fame and relationship with his wife Zelda. Although it received mixed reviews, The Great Gatsby is now widely praised, with some even labeling it the "Great American Novel". While Zelda was placed at a mental institute for her schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934). Faced with financial difficulties due to the declining popularity of his works, Fitzgerald turned to Hollywood, writing and revising screenplays. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he died in 1940, at the age of 44. A fifth, unfinished novel.
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2. The Great Gatsby
THE GREAT GATSBY is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald"s magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream. Fitzgerald-inspired by the parties he had attended while visiting Long Island"s north shore-began planning the novel in 1923, desiring to produce, in his words, "something new-something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." Progress was slow, with Fitzgerald completing his first draft following a move to the French Riviera in 1924. His editor, Maxwell Perkins, felt the book was vague and persuaded the author to revise over the next winter. Fitzgerald was repeatedly ambivalent about the book"s title and he considered a variety of alternatives, including titles that referenced the Roman character Trimalchio; the title he was last documented to have desired was Under the Red, White, and Blue. In its first year, the book sold only 20,000 copies. Fitzgerald died in 1940, believing himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. However, the novel experienced a revival during World War II, and became a part of American high school curricula and numerous stage and film adaptations in the following decades. Today, The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary classic and a contender for the title "Great American Novel". In 1998, the Modern Library editorial board voted it the 20th century"s best American novel and second best English-language novel of the same time period.
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3. The Great Gatsby
(1925) July 9th, 2002: - We have just been informed that this book is still in copyright and therefore we have had to remove the text from the site. In place of the text we have added a chapter by chapter summary. Please note the search feature searches through this summary, not the text. -- This novel shows the basic instinct of human beings to be admired as someone special even if this instinct leads, like moths attracted by the fire, towards burned wings.--Submitted by Mahawa Cheikh Gueye The hollow pursuit of wealth and social status results in tragedy in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Each character has their own way of showing off their wealth and status. Whether it's by the type of car you drive or the location of your house or even through marriage, it's all shown in this novel.--Submitted by Anonymous The Great Gatsby is set in the jazz age, the 1920's. It tells the fictional story of an enigmatic and lonely millionaire named Jay Gatsby, who has been in love with the same woman for years and tries to win her back. The narrator is Nick, who lives across the lawn from Gatsby and becomes friends with him. This book written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the greatest authors of all time shows that no matter how rich we are, it cannot buy us love.--Submitted by Anna This novel is beautiful in every way. It is filled with a haunting sadness, that I have never been able to forget. The prose is beautiful -- glowing like Daisy's green light across the water. The story itself is beautifully tragic -- a poor man falls in love with a beautiful, rich woman (or what she represents) and it brings disaster. But this book is so much more than that. What F. Scott Fitzgerald shows the reader about this society we, ourselves, have created is larger than any story a person could think up. Fitzgerald creates a portrait of the hollowness, carelessness, and ugliness in American society that moved my old English teacher to tears in front of the whole class a few years ago, and brings a lump to my throat even now, as I think about it. If someone asked me what exactly The Great Gatsby "means," I couldn't tell them. I don't think anyone will ever be able to understand it enough to put it in words that will have meaning to everyone, but I think anyone who reads this book WILL have an understanding of it that they can feel in the gut. Such is the way with all great literature.--Submitted by Anonymous
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4. Il grande Gatsby
SOLIDARIETA" DIGITALE : tutto il nostro catalogo in promozione! NUOVA EDIZIONE! Il Grande Gatsby (1925) è il terzo romanzo di Francis Scott Fitzgerald ed è considerato il suo capolavoro. È ambientato negli Stati Uniti durante il primo dopoguerra ed è il drammatico racconto di una storia d’amore. Jay Gatsby, diventato ricco e potente tramite attività illecite, nasconde nell’animo una grande solitudine che non riesce a cancellare nonostante una vita di feste, musica, belle automobili e giovani donne. Non ha mai dimenticato, infatti, il suo più grande amore, Daisy. Il narratore è Nick Carraway che si trasferisce a Long Island proprio accanto alla splendida villa del misterioso Gatsby e ne ricostruisce la parabola esistenziale passo dopo passo. Fra i due si crea un rapporto di amicizia perché il ricco vicino scopre che Nick è il cugino di Daisy, che ha sposato Tom Buchanan, marito infedele e rozzo. Le vite sfavillanti dei personaggi e le loro forti passioni porteranno a un drammatico finale, che lascerà profonde ferite nell’animo di chiunque abbia incrociato le loro strade polverose.
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5. This Side of Paradise
Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an ineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of drowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty through the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice O"Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his family"s life, an unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in “taking care” of his wife, continually harassed by the idea that he didn"t and couldn"t understand her. But Beatrice Blaine! There was a woman! Early pictures taken on her father"s estate at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, or in Rome at the Sacred Heart Convent—an educational extravagance that in her youth was only for the daughters of the exceptionally wealthy—showed the exquisite delicacy of her features, the consummate art and simplicity of her clothes. A brilliant education she had—her youth passed in renaissance glory, she was versed in the latest gossip of the Older Roman Families; known by name as a fabulously wealthy American girl to Cardinal Vitori and Queen Margherita and more subtle celebrities that one must have had some culture even to have heard of. She learned in England to prefer whiskey and soda to wine, and her small talk was broadened in two senses during a winter in Vienna. All in all Beatrice O"Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of all ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud. In her less important moments she returned to America, met Stephen Blaine and married him—this almost entirely because she was a little bit weary, a little bit sad. Her only child was carried through a tiresome season and brought into the world on a spring day in ninety-six.
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6. This Side of Paradise
First published in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s debut novel This Side of Paradise was a sizzling sensation that put the young American author on the map. This heart-rending romance is about a brilliant Princeton University student full of potential whose life is thrown into turmoil by desire. While in school he goes back to Minneapolis where he re-encounters a young lady whom he met as a little boy, and starts a romantic relationship. The book"s initial printing of 3,000 copies sold out in three days. Virtually a record of the ‘Lost Generation’ in its college days, This Side of Paradise is a devastating treatment of Fitzgerald’s characteristic theme of true love blighted by money and lust.
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7. The Great Gatsby
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
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8. F. Scott Fitzgerald Four Pack
"If I wanted anything, I"d take it... I can"t be bothered resisting things I want." ~ The Beautiful and Damned. Fans of The Great Gatsby author are in for a treat! Included in this bundle: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. THIS SIDE OF PARADISE First published in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s debut novel was a sizzling sensation that put the young American author on the map. Its initial printing of 3,000 copies sold out in three days. Virtually a record of the ‘Lost Generation’ in its college days, the novel explores Fitzgerald’s characteristic theme of true love blighted by money lust and is remarkable for its honest and detailed descriptions of the early Jazz Age. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED First published in 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald"s second novel portrays the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York Café Society. The story is believed to be largely based on Fitzgerald"s stormy relationship with Zelda Fitzgerald. This is the tale of young couple Anthony and Gloria Patch living out their days to the hilt in New York City as they await the death of Anthony"s grandfather, Adam Patch from whom they expect to inherit his massive fortune. They drink and eat in the classiest restaurants and hotels, rent the most expensive apartments, travel out to the West in the spring time driving plush cars, wearing top-of-the-line clothing and just generally living it up high on the hog, as they wait. But as time goes on their lust for life and their similarities threaten to destroy their innocence and their relationship. THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ First published in the June 1922 issue of The Smart Set magazine, The Diamond as Big as The Ritz is one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s under-rated masterpieces. The story was initially rejected by publishers because of its not-so-subtle satirical messages about American capitalism. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON The classic short story was first published in Colliers Magazine on May 27, 1922. It was subsequently anthologized in Fitzgerald"s book Tales of the Jazz Age. This is the original version of the story used for the 2008 film starring Brad Pitt.
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9. This Side of Paradise
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920. The book examines the lives and morality of post–World War I youth. Its protagonist Amory Blaine is an attractive student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status seeking, and takes its title from a line of Rupert Brooke"s poem Tiare Tahiti. The novel famously helped F. Scott Fitzgerald gain Zelda Sayre"s hand in marriage; its publication was her condition of acceptance. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American essayist, novelist, screenwriter, and short-story writer, although he was best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term which he coined. Although he temporarily achieved popular success and fortune, Fitzgerald did not receive much critical acclaim until after his death. He published four novels, four collections of short stories, as well as 164 short stories in magazines during his lifetime. Fitzgerald is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
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10. The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. His third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and s*x the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s. The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.
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11. Il curioso caso di Benjamin Button + The curious case of Benjamin Button
SOLIDARIETA" DIGITALE : tutto il nostro catalogo in promozione! Due eBook in uno! Edizioni integrali italiana e inglese. Two eBooks for the price of one ! Italian and english unabridged editions. A Baltimora, nel 1860, accade un fatto inspiegabile. Il Signor Button non vede l’ora di abbracciare per la prima volta il suo primogenito ma, quando si presenta nella clinica privata della città, ad attenderlo c’è la sorpresa più grande della sua vita. Benjamin, il figlio tanto atteso, in realtà è un vecchio dell’apparente età di settant’anni. Il racconto, infatti, inizia con ciò che potrebbe rappresentare la fine di ogni storia: la vecchiaia. Benjamin Button, per un misterioso caso del destino, nasce vecchio e muore bambino. Durante la sua esistenza affronta tutte le tappe della vita di qualsiasi individuo, dall’amore alla guerra, ma alla rovescia. Comincia zoppicando e finisce poppando, con la ragione che va lentamente perdendosi. Il racconto venne pubblicato nel maggio del 1922 sulla rivista Collier’s, ispirato da un"osservazione di Mark Twain che Fitzgerald fece sua: “è un peccato che la parte migliore della nostra vita avvenga all"inizio mentre la peggiore alla fine”.
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12. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was first published in Colliers Magazine on May 27, 1922. It was subsequently anthologized in Fitzgerald"s book Tales of the Jazz Age. This is the original version of the story.
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13. This Side of Paradise
"It bears the impress, it seems to me, of genius. It is the only adequate study that we have had of the contemporary American in adolescence and young manhood." -Burton Rascoe of the Chicago Tribune THIS SIDE OF PARADISE is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke poem Tiare Tahiti, the book examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University student who dabbles in literature. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status seeking. The novel centers on Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner who, convinced that he has an exceptionally promising future, attends boarding school and later Princeton University. He leaves behind his eccentric mother Beatrice and befriends a close friend of hers, Monsignor Darcy. While at Princeton he goes back to Minneapolis where he re-encounters Isabelle Borgé, a young lady whom he met as a little boy, and starts a romantic relationship with her at Princeton he repeatedly writes ever more flowery poems but they become disenchanted with each after meeting again at his prom . . .
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14. The Beautiful and Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel, which brilliantly satirizes a doomed and glamorous marriage, anticipated the master stroke—The Great Gatsby—that would follow, and marks a key moment in the writer’s career. Would-be Jazz Age aristocrats Anthony and Gloria Patch embody the corrupt high society of 1920s New York: they are beautiful, shallow, pleasure-seeking, and vain. As presumptive heirs to a large fortune, they begin their married life by living well beyond their means. Their days are marked by endless drinking, dancing, luxury, and play. But when the expected inheritance is withheld, their lives become consumed with the pursuit of wealth, and their alliance begins to fall apart. Inspired in part by Fitzgerald’s own tumultuous union with his wife Zelda, hauntingly rendered and keenly observed, these characters evoke a vivid portrait of a lost world: a city steeped in vice, a society without direction, and the rootless and decadent generation that inhabited it.
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15. The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
First published in the June 1922 issue of The Smart Set magazine, The Diamond as big as The Ritz is one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s under-rated masterpieces. John T. Unger is a sixteen-year-old boy from an affluent family in Hades, Mississippi on his way to St. Midas" preparatory school in Boston, the most exclusive and expensive prep school in the world. There, he hobnobs with the wealthy and meets another student named Percy Washington. Percy invites John to spend the Summer with his family "out West," and John, who loves being with the super-wealthy, agrees. On the train wide West, Percy reveals that his father is the richest man in the world. He has a diamond the size of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. John soon discovers that Percy is telling the truth. Percy"s father, Braddock T. Washington, has built an enormous château on a mountain that is literally one solid, flawless diamond. The diamond sits in the middle of five square miles in the woods of Montana – the only part of the country that has never been surveyed. The United States doesn"t know that these five square miles exist at all, and the Washingtons plan on keeping it that way. The story was initially rejected by publishers because of its not-so-subtle satirical messages about American capitalism. The scenario criticizes Americans as obsessed with wealth, and considers exploitation inherent in building and expanding the country. American critics didn"t react well to the story upon publication. After all, who likes being told they"re greedy? But Fitzgerald didn"t seem too fazed by these reactions. He said of the story: "[It] was designed utterly for my own amusement. I was in a mood characterized by a perfect craving for luxury, and the story began as an attempt to feed that craving on imaginary foods." (Jazz Age Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald). Here it is, Fitzgerald’s rarely talked about ‘gem’ of a short story, fully remastered for the digital age and beautifully illustrated with vintage advertisement art from the early 1920s. *Includes link to free, full-length audio recording of The Diamond as big as The Ritz.
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16. The Beautiful and Damned
First published in 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald"s second novel The Beautiful and Damned portrays the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York Café Society. The story is believed to be largely based on Fitzgerald"s stormy relationship with Zelda Fitzgerald. This is the tale of young couple Anthony and Gloria Patch living out their days to the hilt in New York City as they await the death of Anthony"s grandfather, Adam Patch from whom they expect to inherit his massive fortune. They drink and eat in the classiest restaurants and hotels, rent the most expensive apartments, travel out to the West in the spring time driving plush cars, wearing top-of-the-line clothing and just generally living it up high on the hog, as they wait. But as time goes on their lust for life and their similarities threaten to destroy their innocence and their relationship. A fierce parable about the illusory quality of dreams, the intractable nature of reality, and the ruin wrought by time, The Beautiful and Damned eerily anticipates the dissipation and decline that would come to the Fitzgeralds themselves before the decade had run its course.
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17. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
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 story writers. First published in 1922, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," a witty and fantastical satire about aging, is one of his most memorable stories. In 1860 Benjamin Button is born an old man and mysteriously begins aging backward. At the beginning of his life he is withered and worn, but as he continues to grow younger he embraces life -- he goes to war, runs a business, falls in love, has children, goes to college and prep school, and, as his mind begins to devolve, he attends kindergarten and eventually returns to the care of his nurse. This strange and haunting story embodies the sharp social insight that has made Fitzgerald one of the great voices in the history of American literature.
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18. The Beautiful and Damned
In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.
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19. The Vegetable
This is the “living” room of Jerry Frost’s house. It is evening. The room (and, by implication, the house) is small and stuffy—it’s an awful bother to raise these old-fashioned windows; some of them stick, and besides it’s extravagant to let in much cold air, here in the middle of March. I can’t say much for the furniture, either. Some of it’s instalment stuff, imitation leather with the grain painted on as an after-effect, and some of it’s dingily, depressingly old. That bookcase held “Ben Hur” when it was a best-seller, and it’s now trying to digest “A Library of the World’s Best Literature” and the “Wit and Humor of the United States in Six Volumes.” That couch would be dangerous to sit upon without a map showing the location of all craters, hillocks, and thistle-patches. And three dead but shamefully unburied clocks stare eyelessly before them from their perches around the walls.
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20. The curious case of Benjamin Button
Benjamin Button was born on the day of the end of the First World War, is a baby in swaddling clothes but has the health of a ninety year old: arthritis, cataract, deafness. He should die the next day and instead the more time passes the more he rejuvenates. His is a life on the contrary that crosses the American twentieth century always in search of the first and only love, a woman much more emancipated, free and in line with her time than him. The only time they will be able to find themselves is when their ages cross.It also was later adapted into the 2008 namesake film and in 2019 into a stage musical.