This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of romances with flappers. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status-seeking, and takes its title from a line of Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti.
Dust jacket cover of the first edition
F. Scott Fitzgerald among junior classmen at Princeton University in 1917. Fitzgerald is pictured in the top row, third from the left.
Fitzgerald circa 1920 when his debut novel was published.
Editor Max Perkins threatened to resign from Scribner's if the company did not publish Fitzgerald's novel.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Fitzgerald in 1929
Portrait of Scott and Zelda by Alfred Cheney Johnston, 1923
Passport photos of the Fitzgeralds, 1923
Fitzgerald's 1923 play, The Vegetable, was an unmitigated disaster and hurt his finances.
