With F. Scott Fitzgerald's reputation standing higher today than ever before, either during his lifetime or since his death, this book comes at an opportune time. For both long-standing admirers and readers still discovering his writings, it provides an ideal one-volume treasury of Fitzgerald's finest work--as a novelist, a writer of some of the most luminous short stories in the language, and an essayist of sharp perception and frank purpose.

Arthur Mizener, critic, reviewer, and author of The Far Side of Paradise, the first bull biography of Fitzgerald, has edited and made the selections for this Reader. In an acute and comprehensive introduction, he correlates Fitzgerald's work terms of the writer's thematic and technical progress. He has organized the selections into four distinct periods of Fitzgerald's career. The first is represented by six short stories--and by what many critics regard as his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, presented here in its entirety. The second includes four stories and the haunting opening passages of Tender Is the Night. The third period shows Fitzgerald coming out of the most serious crisis of his career with three remarkable essays. Five late short stories and two passages from his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon complete the selections.
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