Extremely Early (1922) ALS from "Great Gatsby" Author F. Scott Fitzgerald Mentioning his First Novel

FITZGERALD, F. SCOTT. (1896-1940). American author of This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and Tender is the Night. ALS. (“F. Scott Fitzgerald”). 1p. 4to. White Bear Lake, N.d. [August 19, 1922]. To OLIVER JENKINS, poet and editor of the poetry magazine Tempo.



“Dear Jenkins, Glad you liked the American Magazine article. I guess it’s happened to about everybody. I’d like very much to see a copy of the new Tempo but it’s not on sale here.



I am looking forward to your novel. I’ll be glad to autograph This Side of Paradise for you. Sincerely…”



Fitzgerald published This Side of Paradise in 1920 and, as he had predicted, achieved instant fame. His second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, was published in March 1922. Its success as well as his numerous popular short stories collected in Flappers and Philosophers, Tales of the Jazz Age, All the Sad Young Men, and Taps at Reveille, made him a literary sensation. In September 1922, American Magazine, published his essay, “What I Think and Feel at 25,” undoubtedly the article to which our letter refers, and in which he wrote “I will concoct a Scott Fitzgerald who will make Benjamin Franklin look like a lucky devil who loafed into prominence.’’



“Born in St. Paul, Fitzgerald debuted some of his first plays at the White Bear Yacht Club [in White Bear Lake, Minnesota] while he was a student. In 1922, he spent the summer living at the club with wife Zelda and daughter Scottie, until they were reputedly kicked out for rowdy behavior,” (“Scholars Retrace Fitzgerald’s Footsteps with Visit to White Bear Lake,” White Bear Press, Bussjaeger). It was this locale that reputedly inspired his short story “Winter Dreams,” published in the December 1922 issue of Metropolitan Magazine and set in the fictional Black Bear Lake, Minnesota. “Fitzgerald later called this story a trial of ‘the Gatsby idea,’ playing with some of the themes that would later appear in one of his most famed novels, ‘The Great Gatsby,’” (ibid.).



Fitzgerald was well paid for his writing, and he and his wife became notorious for spending their money on parties, trips and liquor. However, by the 1930s, Zelda had been institutionalized for schizophrenia and Scott’s health had suffered from decades of alcohol abuse.



Jenkins edited the poetry journal Tempo from Danvers, Massachusetts and published numerous poems in The New Yorker as well as his own volume of collected poems entitled Heavenly Bodies.



Not published in Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Bruccoli & Duggan. Folded with normal wear. Matted and framed with a black-and-white portrait of Fitzgerald. Original envelope is included in a glassine envelope on the back of the frame, along with a paper label noting that it was framed at Goodspeed’s Book Shop in Boston in 1983. Not examined out of the frame.

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