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F Scott Fitzgerald

Richard Shephard

Publication: April 2005

Extent: 160 pp

Format: A (178 x 111mm)

Price: 4.99

ISBN: 1904048404

EAN: 9781904048404

13 Digit ISBN: 978-1-904048-40-4

Binding: paperback

Market: literature

Rights: World

BIC Code:

When he was just 23, Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, became an instant success. In the late 1920s, he was the most highly paid short story writer in the world, receiving $4,000 for a single story.
He gave a name to the Jazz Age, the 1920s period of glamour, bootleg liquor and post-war opulence, and he charted its progress and inevitable demise, even as his own flame began to ebb and flicker.
His most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, is one of the peaks of twentieth century literature.
Dying prematurely and in debt and convinced that he would be forgotten, he remains one of the most successful authors of all time, whose books sell in millions around the world.
Alongside Fitzgerald’s life and times, every novel and story collection is examined, as well as his film work and adaptations of his writing.

F Scott Fitzgerald is widely praised as the finest and most celebrated novelist of twentieth century America. His reputation is infinitely more lustrous since his untimely death than it was for much of his twenty-year literary career and is largely based on his 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, as well as on the colourful and tragic incidents of his personal life. His alcoholism; his fairy tale marriage to the beautiful Zelda Sayre, and her gradual descent into schizophrenia; the incandescent blossoming and dissipation of his literary gifts have all added to his legend.

Fitzgerald was an individual who seemed to be composed of opposites and who, fittingly, could have been one of his own characters. He was charming, witty and in love with the magic and splendour of life, but also felt compelled to embrace the darkness. As a writer, his perception of the world around him was so finely tuned and acute that his life and career were a mirror of the 1920s and 30s, so that just as the Jazz Age gave way to the Depression, Fitzgerald’s dazzling and youthful success yielded to drunkenness, despair and what he termed ‘emotional bankruptcy’.

This Pocket Essentials examines both Fitzgerald’s life and writing and probes the infinitely complex and symbiotic relationship between the two, revealing the man behind the myth and behind some of the finest prose of all time.

Richard Shephard has worked in and teetered on the abyss of the book trade for two decades. He is the co-author of the obscure volume, Cult Fiction: A Reader’s Guide and his contributions to the world of contemporary literature have produced inestimable amounts of confetti.

For a review copy or further information, please contact Chris Burrows PR
on 0161 445 6635 or email chris-burrows@o2.co.uk

Distribution UK: Turnaround, 3 Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Rd, London N22 6TZ.
Pocket Essentials, PO Box 394, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1XJ
Tel/Fax 01582 761264 http://www.pocketessentials.co.uk