This Side of Paradise - Softcover

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1500982318 ISBN 13: 9781500982317

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

Synopsis

His is the voice of a generation. During his own time, however, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, author of THE GREAT GATSBY and other now-revered works, was known primarily through the voice of Amory Blaine. Narrator and protagonist of Fitzgerald’s semi-autobiographical THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, Amory Blaine is the privileged son of a fading era. Handsome and intellectually ambitious—he struggles to find meaning and value during a period when those qualities are increasingly difficult to define. After the first horrific world war, Gertrude Stein labeled Fitzgerald’s contemporaries “the Lost Generation.” The post-war young found themselves unable and unwilling to revive the goals and mores of their parents. F. Scott Fitzgerald spoke for that generation as a young author and established his claim as one of the leading—if not THE leading—American writer of the first half of the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his most famous), and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with age and despair. Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle-class family, Fitzgerald was named after his famous second cousin, three times removed, Francis Scott Key, but was referred to by the familiar moniker Scott Fitzgerald. He was also named after his deceased sister, Louise Scott, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth. "Well, three months before I was born," he wrote as an adult, "my mother lost her other two children ... I think I started then to be a writer." His parents were Mollie (McQuillan) and Edward Fitzgerald. His mother was of Irish descent, and his father had Irish and English ancestry. Fitzgerald spent the first decade of his childhood primarily in Buffalo, New York (1898–1901 and 1903–1908, with a short interlude in Syracuse, New York between January 1901 and September 1903). His parents, both devout Catholics, sent Fitzgerald to two Catholic schools on the West Side of Buffalo, first Holy Angels Convent (1903–1904, now disused) and then Nardin Academy (1905–1908). His formative years in Buffalo revealed him to be a boy of unusual intelligence and drive with a keen early interest in literature, his doting mother ensuring that her son had all the advantages of an upper-middle-class upbringing. In a rather unconventional style of parenting, Fitzgerald attended Holy Angels with the peculiar arrangement that he go for only half a day—and was allowed to choose which half. In 1908, his father was fired from Procter & Gamble, and the family returned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy in St. Paul from 1908 to 1911.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1500982318
• ISBN 13: 9781500982317
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 268