The Beautiful and Damned, first published by Scribner's in 1922, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. It portrays the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York caf society. As in Fitzgerald's other novels, the characters are complex, especially with respect to marriage and intimacy. The book is believed to be largely based on Fitzgerald's relationship with Zelda Fitzgerald.

Themes

The Beautiful and Damned is at once a morality tale, a meditation on love, money and decadence, and a social document. It concerns characters' disproportionate appreciation of their past, which consumes them in the present.

According to Fitzgerald critic James West, the novel is concerned with the question of vocation-what does one do with oneself when one has nothing to do? Fitzgerald presents Gloria as a woman whose vocation is nothing more than to catch a husband. After her marriage to Anthony, Gloria's sole vocation is to slide into indolence and alcoholism; her husband's sole vocation is to wait for his inheritance.

Publication history

Fitzgerald wrote The Beautiful and Damned quickly, following editorial suggestions from his friend Edmund Wilson and his editor Max Perkins. The book was serialized in Metropolitan Magazine in 1921 and in March 1922 the book was published. Based on the credible sales of his first book, This Side of Paradise, Scribner's prepared an initial print run of 20,000 copies and mounted an advertising campaign. It sold well enough to warrant additional print runs reaching 50,000 copies. Fitzgerald dedicated the book to the Irish writer Shane Leslie. Originally called The Flight of the Rocket, The Beautiful and Damned is divided into three separate books: "The Pleasant Absurdity of Things", "The Romantic Bitterness of Things", and "The Ironic Tragedy of Things".