This Side of Paradise
Dust jacket cover of first edition
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| Author | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
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| Cover artist | W. E. Hill |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Scribner |
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Publication date
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March 26, 1920 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 305 pp (first edition hardcover) |
| ISBN | (Barnes & Noble paperback) |
| Followed by | The Beautiful and Damned (1922) |
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920 and taking its title from a line of Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti, the book examines the lives and morality of post–World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University student who dabbles in literature. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status seeking.
In the summer of 1919, after less than a year of courtship, Zelda Sayre broke up with the 22-year-old Fitzgerald. After a summer of heavy drinking, he returned to St. Paul, Minnesota, where his family lived, to complete the novel, hoping that if he became a successful novelist he could win Zelda back. While at Princeton (notably in University Cottage Club's library), Fitzgerald had written an unpublished novel, "The Romantic Egotist", and ultimately 80 pages of the typescript of this earlier work ended up in This Side of Paradise.
On September 4, 1919, Fitzgerald gave the manuscript to his friend Shane Leslie to deliver to Maxwell Perkins, an editor at Charles Scribner's Sons in New York. The book was nearly rejected by the editors at Scribners, but Perkins insisted, and on September 16 it was officially accepted. Fitzgerald begged for early publication—convinced that he would become a celebrity and impress Zelda—but was told that the novel would have to wait until the spring. Nevertheless, upon the acceptance of his novel for publication he went and visited Zelda, and they resumed their courtship. His success imminent, she agreed to marry him.
This Side of Paradise was published on March 26, 1920, with a first printing of 3,000 copies. The initial printing sold out in three days. On March 30, four days after publication and one day after selling out the first printing, Fitzgerald wired for Zelda to come to New York and get married that weekend. Barely a week after publication, Zelda and Scott married in New York, on April 3, 1920.
The book went through 12 printings in 1920 and 1921, for a total of 49,075 copies. The novel itself did not provide a huge income for Fitzgerald. Copies sold for $1.75, for which he earned 10 percent on the first 5,000 copies and 15 percent beyond that. In total, in 1920 he earned $6,200 ($82,095.27 in 2015 dollars) from the book. Its success, however, helped the now-famous Fitzgerald earn much higher rates for his short stories.
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Wikipedia