Title: The Great Gatsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: Classic
ISBN: 978-0241341469
Publisher: Scribner
Publication Date: 10th April 1925
Publisher Description: 'It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life'
Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and educated at Princeton. Stationed in Alabama, he met and later married Zelda Sayre. His first novel, This Side of Paradise published in 1920, was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Fitzgerald followed with The Beautiful and the Damned in 1922, The Great Gatsby in 1925 and Tender is the Night in 1934. He was working on The Last Tycoon (1941) when he died, in Hollywood, in 1940.
Literary Atelier Review: What can I say about The Great Gatsby which hasn't already been said in its 100 year history? Other than that I love this book passionately. The poetry of the prose and the passion of Jay Gatsby make me fall in love with it over and over again upon each reread. Fitzgerald was the master of depicting the highs and lows of his hey day. In The Great Gatsby not only does he evocatively describe the height of the roaring twenties he also prophetically depicts its brutal end in the fate of his titular character.
Classics are defined as so for good reason but inevitably not all of them maintain their cultural significance over decades. The Great Gatsby does. It was also nearly forgotten. Upon release Fitzgerald had very high hopes for his novel, coming as it did on the back of his other successes. He was even so bold as to declare he was certain he had written the great American novel. The public did not agree and sales were very disappointing. By the time of his death in 1940 the royalties he was receiving for The Great Gatsby were barely enough to buy him a glass of his favourite Gin Rickey. It wasn't until World War II, when the novel was given to US service men as part of a programme to distribute novels to men on the front line. The book's success was thus cemented and a great literary classic was rediscovered.