The Great Gatsby and Related Stories [Deckle Edge Paper]

Description

Library of America presents the definitive novel of the Jazz Age in an authoritative new text—along with a quartet of brilliant stories that explore variations on the theme of desperate longing for an unattainable someone or something

Boats against the current, we are borne back ceaselessly to The Great Gatsby. Its unforgettable characters—the conflicted narrator Nick Carraway, the golden girl Daisy Buchanan, and the mysterious Jay Gatsby—its indelible symbols and soaring prose, and its large themes of money, class, and American optimism have an enduring fascination and make The Great Gatsby a frequent candidate for “the Great American novel.” 

Now readers can experience F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece in an edition that brings us closest to his original vision for the work. Drawn from the authoritative Library of America edition of Fitzgerald’s collected writings, this deluxe paperback presents a new, corrected text of The Great Gatsby by preeminent Fitzgerald scholar James L. W. West III, incorporating emendations the author made on galley proofs and in his personal copy of the book. 

Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is joined here by four contemporary stories—the “Gatsby cluster”—in which he explores variations on the theme of desperate longing for an unattainable someone or something: “Winter Dreams,” “The Rich Boy,” “Absolution,” and “Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les.” Essential reading for fans of the novel, these, too, are presented in newly corrected texts. 

Rounding out this special edition is a selection of thirteen letters between Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner’s, about the composition, editing, and publication of The Great Gatsby, offering a fascinating glimpse into the genesis of an American classic. Other features include a preface by the editor, a detailed chronology of Fitzgerald’s life and career, and helpful explanatory and textual notes.Born in 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD dropped out of Princeton University in 1917 to join the army. He met the socialite Zelda Sayre while stationed in Alabama and married her in 1920 after the success of This Side of Paradise. Fame, money, and alcohol took their toll on the young couple. After Zelda was institutionalized, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood in 1937. His experiences there inspired the unfinished novel The Last Tycoon (1941). His major works include The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925), All the Sad Young Men (1926), and Tender is the Night (1934). Fitzgerald died of heart failure in Hollywood in 1940.

JAMES L. W. WEST III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Emeritus, at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King, among other works, and was for many years the General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald.US

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