F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

Nicolas Tredell (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1922

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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The spectacular success of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel,

This Side of Paradise

(1920), made it a hard act to follow. In his second novel,

The Beautiful and Damned

(1922), Fitzgerald did not try to offer more of the same but struck out in a new direction which anticipated key aspects of his later fiction.

The Beautiful and Damned

is longer than

This Side of Paradise

, but, despite some digressions, it is more focused and coherent. Its style moves towards that integration of romantic and modernist elements which will come to such dazzling fruition in Fitzgerald’s next novel,

The Great Gatsby

(1925). The theme of

The Beautiful and Damned

, like that of Fitzgerald’s fourth novel,

Tender is the Night

(1934), is the decline of a man and of a marriage: it traces Anthony Patch’s…

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2722 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The Beautiful and Damned". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 February 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1496, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

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