The Beautiful and Damned

<p>The publication of <em>The Beautiful and Damned</em> confirmed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s place in the pantheon of great American writers. The story chronicles the courtship fraught marriage and social demise of Anthony Patch the presumptive heir to a tycoon’s fortune and Gloria Gilbert a ravishing society girl. Brilliant and scathing it is a dazzling tale of lost youth and dissipation that spares no one—least of all the protagonists who resemble in substance if not circumstance Fitzgerald himself and his charismatic capricious wife Zelda. This vivid portrait of a corrupt rootless and boozy age anticipates Fitzgerald’s masterpiece <em>The Great Gatsby</em> and signals his fascination with the themes that would continue to animate his work.</p><p>This edition includes a biographical timeline of the author’s life and the full text of Zelda Fitzgerald’s spoof review of <em>The Beautiful and the Damned</em> which appeared in the <em>New York Tribune.</em></p>