Unsigned first edition book: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzergald. First edition, first printing. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920. Hardcover bound in the publisher's original green cloth, front board lettered in blind, spine lettered in gilt, 5.25 x 7.75, 305 pages. Book condition: VG/None, with slightly bumped corners, minor rubbing and soiling to boards, and erasures to first free end page.
Though Fitzgerald did not complete his studies and graduate with the class of 1917, his years at Princeton permanently shaped his life and career. It was in this world of privilege that he devoted himself to finding his voice as a writer, and there that he met the people who would later reappear as characters in his novels—most notably Ginevra King, the muse behind many of his female characters, including Daisy Buchanan. In 1919, Fitzgerald completed and successfully pitched This Side of Paradise to Scribners; integrating 80 pages of an unpublished novel he had written while at Princeton, and telling the tale of an attractive Princeton student—certainly based on himself—F. Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel is inseparable from his university years.
