The Great Gatsby

Regarded as one of the most important works in American literature and among the greatest American novels of the twentieth century, The Great Gatsby is the quintessential portrait of Jazz Age America, depicting not only the wild parties, romance, love, and the intense and often unfulfilled desire for wealth and status, but also the immorality, loneliness, disappointment and corruption of The Roaring Twenties.

The novel follows Jay Gatsby, a self-made man, in his desperate quest for a place in high society and for the love of the beguiling Daisy Buchanan. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays this world with humor, insight, and profound sympathy as Gatsby’s fate reflects the emptiness and disappointment that comes from his search. First published in 1925, Gatsby emphasizes the splendor of imagination, the fascination with wealth, the value of honesty, the grimness of reality and the profound struggle to escape the past.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896–1940) was one of the most admired writers of the twentieth century. His works include This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, and Tender Is the Night. The Great Gatsby is by far his best-known and most beloved novel.