This Side of Paradise

by Fitzgerald, F. Scott; O'Donnell, Patrick; O'Donnell, Patrick

• ISBN13: 9780140189766
• ISBN10: 0140189769
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-03-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Here is the accomplished first novel that catapulted Fitzgerald to literary fame at the age of 23. It follows the education--intellectual, spiritual, and sexual--of young Amory Blaine. Revised and repackaged.

Author Biography

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University which he left in 1917 to join the army. Fitzgerald was said to have epitomised the Jazz Age, an age inhabited by a generation he defined as ‘grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken’. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre. Their destructive relationship and her subsequent mental breakdowns became a major influence on his writing. Among his publications were five novels, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night and The Love of the Last Tycoon (his last and unfinished work): six volumes of short stories and The Crack-Up, a selection of autobiographical pieces. Fitzgerald died suddenly in 1940. After his death The New York Times said of him that ‘He was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a “generation” … he might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction.’

Table of Contents

This Side of Paradise Acknowledgments
Introduction by Patrick O'Donnell
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Text
This Side of Paradise

Book One: The Romantic Egotist
I. Amory, Son of Beatrice
II. Spires and Gargoyles
III. The Egotist Considers
IV. Narcissus Off Duty

[Interlude: May, 1917 - February, 1919.]

Book Two: The Education of a Personage
I. The Débutante
II. Experiments in Convalescence
III. Young Irony
IV. The Supercilious Sacrifice
V. The Egotist Becomes a Personage

Explanatory Notes