The Beautiful and Damned

Introduction by Hortense Calisher
Commentary by Edmund Wilson, Henry Seidel Canby, and Arthur Mizener

Fitzgerald's second novel, a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age, is a largely autobiographical depiction of a glamorous, reckless Manhattan couple and their spectacular spiral into tragedy. Published on the heels of This Side of Paradise, the story of the Harvard-educated aesthete Anthony Patch and his willful wife, Gloria, is propelled by Fitzgerald's intense romantic imagination and demonstrates an increased technical and emotional maturity. The Beautiful and Damned is at once a gripping morality tale, a rueful meditation on love, marriage, and money, and an acute social document. As Hortense Calisher observes in her Introduction, "Though Fitzgerald can entrance with stories so joyfully youthful they appear to be safe--when he cuts himself, you will bleed."

Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 02/12/2002
ISBN: 9780375759642
Pages: 416
Weight: 0.66lbs
Size: 8.14h x 5.82w x 0.92d
Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 32372 / Beautiful and Damned
Reading Level: 7.7 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 22