In the early spring of 1924, Fitzgerald reconceived the novel, changing its omniscient narration to Nick Carraway’s not always reliable first-person reminiscences and placing most of the action in a fictionalized version of contemporary Great Neck. He drafted three chapters in March and April. The following month, he and his wife and daughter sailed to France for an extended stay. They settled on the French Riviera, where Fitzgerald continued to work on the novel through the summer and early fall of that year. He composed in longhand on sheets of foolscap and worked with stenographers, through two or three drafts, to produce a typescript setting copy of the novel. This document he sent to Perkins via transatlantic mail on October 27, 1924.

  In a long letter of November 20, 1924, to Fitzgerald, Perkins lavished praise on the new novel but offered suggestions about how to bring Jay Gatsby’s character and physical appearance into sharper focus. Perkins’s advice prompted Fitzgerald to revise his novel heavily. The text was now in galley proofs, two sets of which had been sent to him in late December. Fitzgerald supplied more information about the early years of Jay Gatsby’s life and the origins of his money, but he went far beyond addressing Perkins’s criticisms, almost rewriting the novel. He made Nick into a more sympathetic character, moved material about, reordered chapters, deleted long sections of exposition, provided fresh passages of description and dialogue, and polished the prose throughout. And Fitzgerald seemed to settle at last on The Great Gatsby as the title. He had previously tried out several possibilities, including “Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires,” “Gold-Hatted Gatsby,” “Trimalchio,” “Trimalchio in West Egg,” “The High-Bouncing Lover,” “On the Road to West Egg,” and “Gatsby.” In December 1924, Fitzgerald and Perkins agreed to contractual terms, though there was never any doubt that Fitzgerald would publish the novel with Scribner’s, which had published all of his books.

  In January and February 1925, Fitzgerald sent a final set of galleys bearing his handwritten revisions to Perkins (the other set, his working galleys, he kept for himself). He was now living in Italy, and there was not enough time for the publisher to send another round of proofs. Three weeks before publication, he cabled his editor: “CRAZY ABOUT TITLE UNDER THE RED WHITE AND BLUE STOP WHART WOULD DELAY BE.” Perkins cabled back on the following day: “Advertised and sold for April tenth publication. Change suggested would mean some weeks delay, very great psychological damage. Think irony is far more effective under less leading title. Everyone likes present title. Urge we keep it.” Fitzgerald conceded in a March 22 cable: “YOURE RIGHT.” Fitzgerald continued to send revisions to Perkins, by letter and cable, until almost the day of publication.

  The job of incorporating Fitzgerald’s revisions into the text and seeing the novel through the press fell to Perkins. The novel was published on schedule by Scribner’s, with few textual errors, on April 10, 1925.

  The Great Gatsby had an initial print run of 20,870 copies; a second printing of 3,000 copies followed in August 1925. Reviews were generally favorable, but sales were modest, disappointing the expectations of both author and publisher. Harold Ober, Fitzgerald’s literary agent, sold the subsidiary rights for both a stage adaptation and a movie version of the novel. Fitzgerald’s share was $26,000, but the 1926 Broadway play and the silent movie of the same year failed to boost book sales. Fitzgerald felt that The Great Gatsby had not succeeded commercially because, as he explained to Perkins in a letter of late April 1925, the title was “only fair” and because the novel lacked any important female characters. In 1926, Chatto & Windus published the novel in London, using duplicate plates cast in the Scribner’s printing plant.

  This volume presents the text of the first printing of the 1925 Scribner’s edition of The Great Gatsby, emended to account for typographical errors and other obvious mistakes that require correction, for Fitzgerald’s preferred American spellings, and for subsequent alterations authorized by Fitzgerald. The first printing has been collated with Fitzgerald’s composite manuscript, his working galleys, and his personal reading copy of the novel as well as all printings of the novel in the author’s lifetime. Additionally, Fitzgerald’s correspondence with Perkins has been consulted. The typescript setting copy is not known to be extant, nor is the set of galleys that Fitzgerald sent back to Scribner’s (which evidently contained revisions not entered on his working galleys and may have omitted some he had previously made on those galleys). These materials were likely discarded soon after the novel’s publication.

  It was Scribner’s practice up until the 1930s to impose British spelling on the texts of its American authors. Fitzgerald was not an exception in this regard, nor was Scribner’s unique among American publishers in this practice, intended to encourage British publishers to purchase sheets from American publishers or to use their plates for a fee. Instances of this British orthography in The Great Gatsby include “defence,” “centre,” and “criticising.” This volume restores Fitzgerald’s preferred American spellings, with a few exceptions (for example, “theatre”), in deference to Fitzgerald’s own long-standing habit. Hyphenated spellings introduced by Fitzgerald’s editors (for example, “to-day” and “week-end”) have been replaced by the unhyphenated spellings found in the author’s manuscripts.

  As evidenced by Fitzgerald’s manuscript and the extensive revisions he made to the working galleys, he tended to punctuate more lightly than his editors; however, with the exception of the correction of typographical errors, no attempt has been made to restore the punctuation in the composite manuscript, which constitutes a working draft of the novel, not a fair copy.

  Fitzgerald sometimes mispunctuated split speech in dialogue, and his pointing was inconsistently corrected by his typists or by the copy­editors at Scribner’s. For example, in Chapter I, the 1925 Scribner’s text reads as follows:

  “I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”

  In this edition, the comma following the verb has been emended to a period in this and other similar instances. Where necessary, the first word of the second clause has been capitalized.

  Six alterations were introduced into the plates for the second printing of The Great Gatsby in August 1925. Four of these revisions are changes authorized by Fitzgerald; the other two are corrections of typographical errors. All six plate changes have been adopted for the present edition. These emendations are found in the 1926 Chatto & Windus printing. A single additional emendation appears in the British text; that emendation has been adopted (“self-absorbtion” has been corrected to “self-absorption”). In black pencil, Fitzgerald marked about three dozen revisions into the text of his personal reading copy of The Great Gatsby (a first impression of the 1925 Scribner’s text), including corrections in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation as well as substantive alterations. These altered readings from the marked copy are incorporated into the present edition. Tom Buchanan’s “God Damn” and “God Damned,” from the manuscript and galleys, are adopted for this edition instead of the milder “God damned” of the first edition. An alternative reading adopted from an April 10, 1925, letter from Fitzgerald to Perkins has been adopted for this edition and is noted in the list of emendations.

  Within a few weeks after the publication of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald—now living in Paris—began to assemble and edit the nine stories that comprise All the Sad Young Men. All the stories had been previously published in magazines, but Fitzgerald now heavily reworked them for book publication. Given the scope of his revisions, he likely submitted new typescripts rather than marked-up tearsheets to Scribner’s. In the case of “Winter Dreams,” he wrote several new passages of descriptive prose and substituted them for passages he had incorporated into The Great Gatsby. This was a common practice for Fitzgerald; he identified passages of good description and dialogue from his stories, copied them into his notebooks, and often used them again in his novels. In a letter of June 1925 to Perkins, Fitzgerald reported that the setting copy “will reach you by July 15th.” In the same letter, he proposed language for the flap copy of the jacket: the collection shows the “transition from his early exuberant stories of youth which created a new type of American girl and the later and more serious mood which produced The Great Gatsby and marked him as one of the half dozen masters of English prose now writing in America.”

  Based on Fitzgerald’s reported progress, Perkins scheduled All the Sad Young Men for publication in the fall of 1925, but Fitzgerald did not mail the setting copy until late August. And there was another problem: Harold Ober had sold “The Rich Boy” to Red Book magazine for publication in two parts, and the editors at Red Book were unable to clear the necessary space in the monthly magazine until January and February 1926. Red Book had paid $3,500 for “The Rich Boy,” a high price at the time, and insisted the collection not be released until after the publication of the February issue. Fitzgerald had originally agreed not to see galleys of the book so that it might pass quickly into print and be available for the Christmas bookselling season, but the postponement in publication now made it possible for galleys to be mailed to him in mid-October. He corrected the galleys and sent them back to Perkins by the end of November. Scribner’s published All the Sad Young Men on February 26, 1926, to favorable reviews. An initial printing of 10,100 copies was soon followed by two smaller printings of 3,020 and 3,050 copies, in March and May 1926.

  For “The Rich Boy,” “Winter Dreams,” “Absolution,” and “Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les,” this volume presents the text of the first printing of the 1926 Scribner’s edition of All the Sad Young Men, emended in consultation with the published magazine versions of the stories and, when they exist, with typescripts, to account for Fitzgerald’s preferred American spellings, typographical errors, and other mistakes requiring correction. No copy of the printed book bearing revisions by Fitzgerald is known to survive, nor are any galleys extant. No plate changes were introduced into subsequent printings of the collection. There was no British printing of the collection during the author’s lifetime. Details of the first publication of the four stories selected for this volume are given below.

  The Rich Boy. The Red Book Magazine, January and February 1926.

  Winter Dreams. Metropolitan Magazine, December 1922.

  Absolution. The American Mercury, June 1924.

  Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les, McCall’s, July 1924.

  The letters between Fitzgerald and Perkins selected for this volume are printed in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters (Scribner’s, 1994), ed. by Matthew Bruccoli, with the following three exceptions. Fitzgerald’s letter of January 15, 1925, to Perkins, and Perkins’s letters of January 20, 1925, and February 24, 1925, to Fitzgerald have been newly transcribed by James L. W. West from scans of the originals or from carbon copies, and they are given here as Fitzgerald and Perkins wrote them, in keeping with the textual policies guiding Bruccoli’s transcriptions in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters. Misspellings and other irregularities are preserved in all the selections. In a handful of stipulated cases, words dropped from the letters have been supplied in brackets. Some material not concerning The Great Gatsby has been omitted from the present volume; these omissions are signaled in the texts by four ellipsis points. Fitzgerald’s letters were typically handwritten, and in the rarer instances in which they were typed Fitzgerald had them prepared by a professional secretary. Perkins’s letters, typewritten from his dictation to his secretary, survive in carbon copies. Their correspondence reveals the close working relationship between author and editor and more particularly Perkins’s influence on revisions to The Great Gatsby. All these letters—Fitzgerald’s originals and Perkins’s carbons—are preserved in the Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

  The texts presented in this volume reproduce those of the selected sources, altered only in the ways described above. Substantive alterations to The Great Gatsby and selected stories from All the Sad Young Men are indicated in the list of emendations below. The two lists record, by page and line number, the changes incorporated into the respective texts. A key to the abbreviations used to indicate the source of a particular reading precedes the list of emendations for each text.

  THE GREAT GATSBY

  MS

  The Great Gatsby, composite manuscript, March–September 1924, F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

  G

  Fitzgerald’s working galleys, January–February 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

  Ai

  The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner’s, 1925. Copy-text.

  Ai2

  The Great Gatsby, second printing (August 1925). New York: Scribner’s, 1925.

  Aib

  The Great Gatsby. London: Chatto & Windus, 1926.

  FC

  Fitzgerald’s marked copy of The Great Gatsby (first printing).

  L

  Letter from Fitzgerald to Perkins, April 10, 1925, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

  ed

  Editor.

  8.29 confusion] FC; wonder

  9.1 arresting] FC; interesting

  14.4 Damn] MS; damned

  18.15 said] FC; began

  19.8 startlingly] MS; startingly

  24.11 been at] ed; been

  25.8 men] FC; ash-gray men

  26.7–8 restaurants] FC; cafés

  27.17 surplus flesh] FC; flesh

  30.1 so warm] FC; warm

  30.2 afternoon that I] FC; afternoon. I

  31.9 disappeared] FC; both disappeared

  36.14 had played no part in her past] FC; expected no affection

  36.18 out.” She looked to see who was listening. “‘Oh] FC; out: ‘Oh

  37.3–4 was him] FC; saw him

  41.11 shorn] FC; bobbed

  42.10 amusement parks] FC; an amusement park

  45.3 sometime] MS; sometimes

  47.27 Third] FC; First

  48.1 Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion] FC; Twenty-eighth Infantry

  48.2 Seventh Infantry] FC; Sixteenth

  48.25 external] FC; eternal

  50.7 echolalia] Ai2; chatter

  50.9 Vladimir] ed; Vladmir

  50.14 Vladimir] ed; Vladmir

  50.28–29 formed with] MS; formed for

  55.19 them little] MS; them a little

  57.12 five] FC; lined five

  57.16 outlined] FC; made

  57.16 gestures] FC; circles

  63.3 work or rigid sitting] FC; work

  65.6 ­two machine-gun detachments] FC; the remains of my machine-gun battalion

  68.29 asked Gatsby] MS; asked

  74.20 Seelbach] FC; Muhlbach

  76.17 Victoria] MS; victoria

  77.16 he’s a regular] FC; he’s regular

  80.12 looked] FC; looked down

  86.17 occasionally willing] FC; willing, even eager,

  86.23 a large] FC; the large

  89.9 Adam] ed; Adam’s

  93.22 will store] FC; can store

  96.24 self-absorption] Aib; self-absorbtion

  97.7 southern] Ai2; northern

  117.11–13 expectantly. ¶“Pardon me?” ¶“Have ] G; expectantly. ¶“Have

  118.12 stop] MS; spot

  125.2 added, as if she might have sounded irreverent,] FC; added,

  128.23 God Damned] G; God damned

  133.14 Michaelis] FC; Mavromichaelis

  134.20 its] Ai2; it’s

  134.29 ripped] FC; ripped a little

  135.4 away.] Ai2; away

  135.17 wire] FC; metal

  135.23 disarranged] MS; deranged

  137.19 him, seized] ed; him seized

  137.19 him] MS; him,

  138.26 God Damn] MS; God damned

  139.10 moonlit] MS; moonlight

  146.18 finger] MS; fingers

  152.2 Central] ed; central

  152.3 Long Distance] ed; long distance

  157.3 thereabouts] MS; thereabout

  158.19 compass] L; transit

  161.5 as] FC; though

  161.5 unmoved] FC; shocked

  166.14 sickantired] Ai2; sick in tired

  166.17 at me all] MS; at me

  166.19 Wolfshiem] MS; Wolfsheim

  171.6 Owl Eyes] ed; Owl-eyes

  171.16 Union Station] Ai2; Union Street station

  from ALL THE SAD YOUNG MEN

  MS

  Early holograph manuscript for “Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les,” December 1923, F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.