A collection of early short stories which helped make F. Scott Fitzgerald's name.
Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opened the 66th Cannes Film Festival.
A 'Piece of Passion' from Alessandro Gallenzi on the Alma Classics editions... 'F. Scott Fitzgerald has been long a favourite of mine. Since I discovered The Great Gatsby at university, I have been avidly reading all of his work. I am particularly fond of some of his short stories, from ‘The Rich Boy’ (in All the Sad Young Men) to ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ and ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ (in Tales of the Jazz Age).
I have poured all my passion and love for Fitzgerald’s work into these stylish editions, with front-cover illustrations by Art-Deco genius Georges Barbier, flaps, pictures and a wealth of extra material. These books are a publisher’s and a fan’s tribute to one of the greatest masters of world literature.'
Fitzgerald's second collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), includes two masterpieces - 'May Day' and 'The Diamond as Big as the Ritz' - as well as other stories from his earlier career. Tales of the Jazz Age reproduces the original collection in full, along with several uncollected stories from the early 1920s, including 'Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar', a 1923 narrative which closely anticipates the themes and characters of The Great Gatsby. In his introduction James L. W. West, III offers an account of the textual history of the stories, reconstructs Fitzgerald's decisions about which stories to include and exclude, and examines reproductions of surviving manuscripts and typescripts. He supplies a full record of variants, tracing Fitzgerald's extensive revisions to the stories, and he provides detailed historical notes, references and glosses.