Fitzgerald, F. Scott

This Side of Paradise. New York: Scribner's, 1920

8vo (7 1/2 x 5 1/4 ins; 190 x 133 mm). Publisher's linen-like green cloth with gilt-lettered spine; two tiny tears to cloth at spine ends, imprint a little rubbed and few stray spots to cloth. Original dust-jacket with W.E. Hill illustration; light creasing at panel edges, few closed tears at edges of rear panel and top of spine panel, easily removed old tape backing on verso; front flap fold rubbed, but a complete, lightly worn and unrestored example, very scarce thus.



 

Bruccoli A5.1.a

First edition in jacket of Fitzgerald's first novel Fitzgerald's first portrait of the Jazz Age's Lost Generation featured the themes that the author would return to and perfect, that of doomed lost romance among differing classes and lost love amid the endless pursuit for social status. Still at Princeton when he sent the manuscript (then titled The Romantic Egoist) to Charles Scribner, it was published in 3,000 copies on 26 March 1920 and it's immediate success launched Fitzgerald's career. By the end of the next year This Side of Paradise had been reprinted 12 times and sold nearly 50,000 copies.

Unrestored examples of this jacket in the correct issue as here are notably uncommon and even those with often heavy repair appear only infrequently at auction. The present copy is remarkably unworn and distinctly scarce thus.