The spectacular success of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), made it a hard act to follow. In his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), Fitzgerald did not try to offer more of the same but struck out in a new direction which anticipated key aspects of his later fiction. The Beautiful and Damned is longer than This Side of Paradise, but, despite some digressions, it is more focused and coherent. Its style moves towards that integration of romantic and modernist elements which will come to such dazzling fruition in Fitzgerald’s next novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). The theme of The Beautiful and Damned, like that of Fitzgerald’s fourth …
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Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The Beautiful and Damned". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 February 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1496, accessed 26 November 2024.]