“Because desire just cheats you.”She is a reveler. He is a socialite. They are young, haughty and selfish. And they do not understand the idea of working. Meet Gloria Gilbert, the beautiful, narcissistic dancer and Anthony Patch, the prospective heir to his grandfather’s fortune. Stunned by Gloria’s beauty, Anthony is desperately in love with her; and soon she becomes his wife. But as the passionate and glamorous couple await the inheritance, indulging in the luxurious and thrilling lifestyle of New York, they are chafed under financial pressures. What happens as their marriage begins to fail in the face of reality? With characters representing the extravagance of the upper echelons and the intrinsic conflicts of a changing social environment, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Beautiful and Damned probes into the café society of New York, exploring the ideas of money and decadence. This Jazz Age novel is considered a masterpiece and continues to remain a bestseller.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and educated at Princeton. Stationed in Alabama, he met and later married Zelda Sayre. His first novel, This Side of Paradise published in 1920, was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Fitzgerald followed with The Beautiful and the Damned in 1922, The Great Gatsby in 1925 and Tender is the Night in 1934. He was working on The Last Tycoon (1941) when he died, in Hollywood, in 1940.