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The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

f. scott fitzgerald roxana robinson bryant mangum

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Edited and with an Introduction by Bryant Mangum
Foreword by Roxana Robinson

Benediction • Head and Shoulders • Bernice Bobs Her Hair • The Ice Palace • The Offshore Pirate • May Day • The Jelly Bean • The Diamond as Big as the Ritz • Winter Dreams • Absolution

In the euphoric months before and after the publication of This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the flapper’s historian and poet laureate of the Jazz Age, wrote the ten stories that appear in this unique collection. Exploring characters and themes that would appear in his later works, such as The Beautiful and Damned and The Great Gatsby, these early selections are among the very best of Fitzgerald’s many short stories.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic includes notes, an appendix of nonfiction essays by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and their contemporaries, and vintage magazine illustrations.

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1924

This edition

Format
352 pages, Paperback
Published
November 8, 2005 by Random House Publishing Group
ISBN
9780812974775
ASIN
0812974778
Language
English

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About the author

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f. scott fitzgerald

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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 40 votes)
5 stars
10(25%)
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40 reviews All reviews
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MegaMerk
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Deep into this book in the middle of a rainy summer night, and just found the best sentence yet: "...it is well known among ladies over thirty-five that when the younger set dance in the summer-time it is with the very worst intentions in the world, and if they are not bombarded with stony eyes stray couples will dance weird barbaric interludes in the corners, and the more popular, more dangerous girls will sometimes be kissed in the parked limousines of unsuspecting dowagers."
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Korbic
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I really enjoyed these short stories. The first story in the collection, "Benediction," was my least favorite - the motivations of the characters were a little too opaque. I'm glad I continued reading, however, since there were a number of great stories in this book. I particularly enjoyed two stories for their humor: "Head and Shoulders" (light and amusing) and "May Day" (dark, but with a very funny - and true - sequence involving two drunk young men). "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" was also very funny and a wonderful character study.
I didn't particularly enjoy "Winter Dreams," but it was interesting to read the story as a sort of proto-Gatsby tale. Also, "The Ice Palace" should be required reading for anyone who wants to move to the Upper Midwest - Fitzgerald knew his people very well!
Overall a very strong short story collection.
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BlindSenpai123
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Done with most some of the stories here, as they were in Flappers and Philosophers. Methinks the Fitzgeralds (Yes--Zelda too, as indicated in an essay she contributes toward the end of this book) are overdoing this focus on the flapper as a curiosity unique to that particular era (to be replaced by the vapid Valley Girl of today?). Anyhow, as with Flappers and Philosophers, two stories stand out here: the hilarious Head and Shoulders, and Bernice Bobs Her Hair (I applaud the ending--brava, Bernice!). And dated as the plot may be by today's standards, Benediction stands out for its disturbing end--we WANT to know if Lois kept her tryst with her lover!
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ArminGux
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Loved this collection for one story: The Offshore Pirate. Why didn't this story get more attention? It is completely fantastical in its whimsy. Loved it.
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mwas_here
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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My mother sent me this book for my 29th Birthday in May, the joke being that he was the great poet of the 20's and I was on my way out -- she also slipped ten $20 bills between the pages of the book, one for each year spent as a twentysomething -- which, really, is the peeerfect gift.
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Nezzuji
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A very slow read that requires lots of attention. Some great short stories in the collection I must say, but the rest was a bore.
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sagar110
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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It's weird reading this from when Fitzgerald was writing to make ends meet, cos one story will be incredibly beautiful and cool and incisive about the intersection between class and interior consciousness, and then the next one will be about a zany pirate named Carlyle.
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