Plot

At a glance: • Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald • First Published: 1922 • Type of Plot: Romantic satire • Time of Work: 1913-1921 • Setting: New York City and environs, and the vicinity of a military training camp in South Carolina • Principal Characters: Anthony Patch, Gloria Gilbert Patch, Adam Patch, Richard Caramel, Maury Noble, Dorothy Raycroft • Genres: Long fiction, Satire • Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S.,United States or Americans, Love or romance, South or Southerners,New York City, Marriage, Class consciousness, 1910’s, Wealth,Millionaires • Locales: New York, NY, South Carolina

The Novel

Originally called “The Flight of the Rocket,” The Beautiful and Damned is the story of Anthony Patch’s life between his twenty-fifth and thirty-third years. The novel follows the progression of his intense love for the dazzlingly beautiful Gloria Gilbert. It traces their attachment through their courtship and marriage, through their apparently endless round of parties and gaiety, to their eventual financial difficulties, and finally to their triumphant achievement of Anthony’s “great expectations.” The victory comes too late, however, and the...

The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Beautiful and Damned was published in 1922, almost exactly two years after This Side of Paradise. That Fitzgerald wrote the entire novel between 1919 and 1921 amidst engagement, marriage, the publication and huge reception of his first novel, the sales of first short stories to magazines, and the beginnings of a legendary dozen years of "going on a party," is a testament to the enormous productivity one may be able to achieve in their earlier and more vulnerable years. A friend of mine did not like Beautiful and Damned when I told him he "had" to read it a few years ago. Oh, at the time he said he liked it, but recently he revealed that he thought it was too long and some other