F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

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Published in

The Smart Set

in 1922 and collected in

Tales of the Jazz Age

that same year, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” is an interesting artifact of the “roaring twenties” with self-conscious roots in nineteenth-century Continental decadence. Fitzgerald – who pursued a somewhat lavish lifestyle himself, commanding thousands of dollars per short story – has said he began the story by trying to imagine the limits of material wealth in a playful daydream (“The Diamond”). The experiment revealed, however, that extreme wealth can be deadly.

The story describes the summer vacation of John T. Unger, a teenager from Hades, Mississippi, who is invited to spend the break at the home of his mysterious classmate, Percy Washington. The boys are

900 words

Citation: Kale, Verna. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 January 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1068, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1068 The Diamond as Big as the Ritz 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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