Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda : The Love Letters of F.Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - Softcover

ZELDA FITZGERALD

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747566011 ISBN 13: 9780747566014

Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING LTD., 2003

Synopsis

Through his alcoholism and her mental illness, his career highs (and lows) and her institutional confinement, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's devotion to each other endured for more than twenty-two years. Now, for the first time, the story of the love of these two glamorous and hugely talented writers can be given in their own letters. Introduced by an extensive narrative of the Fitzgeralds' marriage, the 333 letters - three-quarters of them previously unpublished or out of print - have been edited by the noted Fitzgerald scholars, Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks. They are illustrated throughout with a generous selection of familiar and unpublished photographs.

About this title

About the Author:

Jackson R. Bryer is a professor at the University of Maryland. He has edited the Scott Fitzgerald-Maxwell Perkins correspondence and Selected Letters of Eugene O'Neill. Cathy W. Barks teaches American Literature at the University of Maryland

From Publishers Weekly:

"Once we were one person," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his wife in the last years of their marriage, "and always it will be a little that way." While this carefully annotated collection (edited by two scholars at the University of Maryland) is dominated by Zelda's letters more of hers are extant it provides an intimate account of an enduring romantic union (as opposed to the dirty laundry of the Fitzgeralds' spectacular Jazz Age revels and rows or Scott's descent into alcoholism and Zelda's into mental illness). Their cross-Mason-Dixon Line courtship letters begin in 1918, with Zelda displaying her ardor and "mental wickedness" and Scott responding in brief but affectionate telegrams. The Great Depression coincided with Zelda's psychological malaise, and her letters from the '30s are penned from various sanitariums and, later, her family's home in Alabama, where she convalesced under her mother's care. Scott's letters are sufficiently represented only in his final year, when he was exiled to Hollywood as a scriptwriter and had a secretary to keep copies. Among the mutual assurances of love and the occasional long-distance tiffs, Scott and Zelda sometimes discuss art Zelda's search for self-expression in writing, dance and painting; Scott's desire to be "an instrument" for "dark, tragic destiny." Although Scott's letters, typically written in his high lyric style, are unfortunately outnumbered, this collection offers many previously unpublished epistles and photographs as well as an introduction by the Fitzgeralds' granddaughter, and is a moving portrait of a two-decades-long, complicated and deep love affair. (Apr.)Forecast: The Fitzgeralds remain a popular literary couple Nancy Milford's three-decades-old Zelda still sells well so there should be demand for this collection.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING LTD.
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0747566011
• ISBN 13: 9780747566014
• Binding: Paperback