The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
FITZGERALD, F. Scott (1896-1940). The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925.

First edition, first printing, in a first state dust jacket, with a lowercase "j" in "Jay Gatsby" on the rear panel hand-corrected in ink. Contemporary bookseller's ticket of Newbegins, San Francisco at rear.

"The Great Gatsby, as both [Maxwell] Perkins and [Ring] Lardner perceived, is Fitzgerald's most perfectly realized work of art. The novel reveals a new and confident mastery of his material, a fascinating if sensational plot, a Keatsian ability to evoke a romantic atmosphere, a set of memorable and deeply interesting characters, a witty and incisive social satire, a surprisingly effective use of allusions, an ambitious theme and a silken style that seeems as fresh today as it did seventy years ago" (Meyers, p. 122).

Set on the North Shore of Long Island and Manhattan, and inspired by the extravagant social scene Fitzgerald observed during his eighteen-month residence in Great Neck over 1922-24, The Great Gatsby tells the tragic story of the American Dream gone awry as seen through the eyes of Nick Carraway. The novel went through several failed starts prior to 1924, but it was not until Scott and Zelda had escaped the New York social scene to the Riviera in May 1924, that he seriously set himself to work on what would become his masterpiece. Although the finished work was admired by virtually all the eminent literary figures of his day, sales did not meet his expectations and only barely paid off his advance from Scribner's.

"In 1925—the year Dreiser published An American Tragedy, Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer and Hemingway In Our Time—Fitzgerald made an impressive leap from his deeply flawed early novels to his first masterpiece" (Meyers, p. 122). Bruccoli A11.1.a; Connolly, The Modern Movement 48.

Octavo. (Couple of light spots to half-title.) Original publisher's green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, very bright (small bump to lower corner); pictorial dust jacket by F. Cugat (folds and spine panel reinforced with tissue on verso repairing some small losses, chips to spine panel ends and top corners of upper panel restored in expert facsimile affecting the two T's in title and six letters on spine panel, light edge wear re-touched); custom blue morocco slipcase.