Fitzgerald's Craft of Short Fiction
Fitzgerald's Craft of Short Fiction
The Collected Stories 1920-1935
Fitzgerald’s Craft of Short Fiction offers the first comprehensive study of the four collections of short stories that F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) prepared for publication during his lifetime: Flappers and Philosophers (1920), Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), All the Sad Young Men (1926), and Taps at Reveille (1935). These authorized collections—which include works from the entire range of Fitzgerald’s career, from his undergraduate days at Princeton to his final contributions to Esquire magazine—provide an ideal overview of his development as a short story writer.
Originally published in 1989, this volume draws upon Fitzgerald’s copious personal correspondence, biographical studies, and all available criticism, and analyzes how Fitzgerald perceived his achievements as a writer of short fiction from both artistic and commercial standpoints. Petry pays close attention to the individual stories, exploring how Fitzgerald’s growing technical expertise and the evolution of his themes reflect changes in his personal life.
‘A fresh breeze in the world of Fitzgerald scholarship.’ –American Literature
‘In her sophisticated analysis, Petry devotes a chapter to each of the collections, but proceeds beyond this deceptively simple structure to link the works thematically to Fitzgerald’s life in terms of six primary clusters of thematic concepts…. Recommended for all academic libraries.’ –Choice
‘This is a careful work of scholarship and criticism by an experienced, sophisticated Fitzgerald scholar/teacher, and it goes much further—with respect to both breadth and depth—than has any previous work on Fitzgerald’s short fiction.’ –Jackson R. Bryer, University of Maryland at College Park
Alice Hall Petry is Associate Professor of English at the Rhode Island School of Design.
