F Scott Fitzgerald's books: a guide to The Great Gatsby author

Published to instant acclaim, this semi-autobiographical novel charts the coming-of-age of young, proud Amory Blaine. Amory spends his childhood travelling around with his charming but eccentric mother, eventually landing in Princeton as a handsome, naive student who joins the army after graduating. The second part of the book deals with his life and relationships after returning to America. This is a vastly funny novel with many moments of bittersweet, beautiful description. Amory’s character is extremely entertaining throughout: he is cocksure yet self-aware, flirtatious yet bashful.  

Fitzgerald mixes fiction with autobiography once again in this story of a couple whose whirlwind lifestyle brings catastrophic consequences. Anthony and Gloria are madly in love: she is a 1920s flapper and he is a listless young man awaiting a vast inheritance from a wealthy grandfather. But years of extravagant partying lead them nowhere, and Anthony’s grandfather refuses to pass on any money when he learns of his grandson’s reckless cavorting. Anthony is drafted during the First World War and upon his return nothing remains of his previous happiness with Gloria. Though he stands to get the inheritance, was it all worth it? 

Though now considered one of the greatest American novels, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby sold badly compared to his previous books. It pieces together the story of millionaire Jay Gatsby from the perspective of narrator Nick Carraway, who rents a house near Gatsby one summer. Gatsby is known for his lavish parties, but who is he, really? Nick finds himself thrown into a strange circle of acquaintances, where secrets, enemies and old loves lurk just beneath the surface. 

This was the final novel Fitzgerald completed, and he thought of it as his masterwork. The story begins with an American couple enjoying their sojourn on the French Riviera. Dick is a young, talented psychiatrist and Nicole is his wife and sometime patient. The relationship is examined through flashbacks to their first meetings, when Nicole was receiving treatment at a psychiatric clinic in Zurich. As the narrative returns to the present day, a shocking series of events pulls Dick and Nicole further and further apart.

Plunge into the 1920s with this volume of short stories, dedicated “quite inappropriately”, writes Fitzgerald, “to my mother.” In ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, a man ages backwards, starting life as a pensioner. ‘The Camel’s Back’ features two characters on a mission to gatecrash a circus-themed ball in a camel costume. ‘Tarquin of Cheapside’ is a layered and enigmatic story written during Fitzgerald’s time at Princeton. In ‘May Day’, a reunion of old friends swiftly morphs into a case of blackmail. And Zelda Fitzgerald wrote part of ‘The Jelly Bean’, a story set in the American South about an idler’s hopeless love.

Here’s something a bit different: On Booze is a collection of Fitzgerald’s writing about alcohol, something that features in almost all his short stories. An evocation of Prohibition-era life, and the rambunctious Jazz Age, this collection brings together material from across Fitzgerald’s career. There are excerpts from notebooks and letters, along with four autobiographical short stories, all richly portraying a seductive, rowdy and roaring period in literature and history.