F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context

Description

The fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald serves as a compelling and incisive chronicle of the Jazz Age and Depression Era. This collection explores the degree to which Fitzgerald was in tune with, and keenly observant of, the social, historical and cultural contexts of the 1920s and 1930s. Original essays from forty international scholars survey a wide range of critical and biographical scholarship published on Fitzgerald, examining how it has evolved in relation to critical and cultural trends. The essays also reveal the micro-contexts that have particular relevance for Fitzgerald's work - from the literary traditions of naturalism, realism and high modernism to the emergence of youth culture and prohibition, early twentieth-century fashion, architecture and design, and Hollywood - underscoring the full extent to which Fitzgerald internalized the world around him.

Bryant Mangum is Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition to F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context, he is the editor of Modern Library's The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He is also author of A Fortune Yet: Money in the Art of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Short Stories. His essays have appeared in Resources for American Literary Study, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, the Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual, The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, New Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald's Neglected Stories, and many other books and journals.

'Bryant Mangum's F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context is the kind of collection we need. Throughout, it reads smoothly and effectively like a literary-cultural biography; its focused, topical essays cover myriad aspects of Fitzgerald's life, work, and times ... any student or teacher-scholar looking to do serious work on Fitzgerald should read this book. ... [It] is both rich and versatile ...' The Fitzgerald Review 'Meticulous and impressively broad in scope and context, this collection offers informative yet entertaining insight into virtually every aspect of Fitzgerald's life, work, development and influences ...These essays should be required reading for seminar classes featuring Fitzgerald. For that matter, anyone interested in Fitzgerald would do well to read the book in its entirely or choose at random from the interesting offerings ... Highly recommended. All readers.' Choice