The Beautiful and Damned is a Jazz Age novel about Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert, a wealthy New York couple whose marriage and hopes are tested by ambition, leisure, and money. Fitzgerald's prose captures the glitter and uncertainty of 1920s high society, making it a rich portrait of love and self-destruction.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD 1922 Novels THE LAST TYCOON (Unfinished) With a foreword by Edmund Wilson and notes by the author TENDER IS THE NIGHT THE GREAT GATSBY THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED THIS SIDE OF PARADISE Stories THE PAT HOBBY STORIES With an introduction by Arnold Gingrich TAPS AT REVEILLE SIX TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE AND OTHER STORIES With an introduction by Frances Fitzgerald Lanahan FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS With an introduction by Arthur Mizener THE STORIES OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD A selection of 28 stories, with an introduction by Malcolm Cowley Stories and Essays AFTERNOON OF AN AUTHOR With an introduction and notes by Arthur Mizener THE FITZGERALD READER: A Selection Edited and with an introduction by Arthur Mizener
The victor belongs to the spoils.
—ANTHONY PATCH
TO
SHANE LESLIE, GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
AND MAXWELL PERKINS
IN APPRECIATION OF MUCH LITERARY HELP
AND ENCOURAGEMENT
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
I.
ANTHONY PATCH
II.
PORTRAIT OF A SIREN
III. THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES
BOOK TWO
I.
THE RADIANT HOUR
II.
SYMPOSIUM
III.
THE BROKEN LUTE
BOOK THREE
I. A MATTER OF CIVILIZATION
II.
A MATTER OF AESTHETICS
III.
NO MATTER!
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
ANTHONY PATCH
In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see
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