Fitzgerald, F. Scott | All the Sad Young Men, first edition

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

All the Sad Young Men. New York: Scribner’s, 1926

8vo. Leaves lightly toned. Publisher’s green cloth boards, upper cover lettered in blind, spine gilt-lettered, original unclipped pictorial dust-jacket with cover image by Cleon in green and black; dust-jacket cleanly split along front cover fold, minor loss at head. Custom clamshell case.

First edition, first issue, of Fitzgerald's third collection of stories (containing nine), including several of his finest: "The Rich Boy," "Winter Dreams," "The Baby Party," "Absolution," and "The Sensible Thing." These stories were first collected in February 1926, and originally published in journals.

Writing to his editor Maxwell Perkins, Fitzgerald wrote of the title that "seven stories deal with young men of my generation in rather unhappy moods." Of the nine stories, "Absolution" was the one of the best-received, and originally written to provide backstory to The Great Gatsby. Several of the other the stories interweave semi-autobiographical moments of Fitzgerald's marriage with Zelda and his time and classmates at Princeton.

Its review in the The New York Times held All the Sad Young Men to tough standards after the success of The Great Gatsby: "It must be said that the collection as a whole is not sustained to the high excellence of 'The Great Gatsby,' but it has stories of fine insight and finished craft....He has written a book of mellow, mature, ironic, entertaining stories, and one of them, at least, challenges the best of our contemporary output."

REFERENCES

Bruccoli A1.12.a; Kuel, F. Scott Fitzgerald: a study of short fiction, 52