In 1940, the year F. Scott Fitzgerald died, he sold only seven copies of The Great Gatsby and nine of Tender Is the Night, for a total income of $13.13. Neither he nor his wife Zelda lived to see the rebirth of their reputations, his as author of the Great American Novel, hers as his muse, and a gifted creator in her own right, doomed never to realise her potential.
Much of the Fitzgeralds' blazing rise and dying fall took place in France. Both The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night were written there, and their experience of les années folles informs such stories as Babylon Revisited, as well as Zelda's only novel, Save Me the Waltz, a vivid snapshot of the Lost Generation's self-indulgent existence along the Côte d'Azur.
Scott Fitzgerald's France: A User's Guide follows the Fitzgeralds during the decade they lived intermittently in Paris and on the Riviera, with excursions to Rome and Capri. For visitor and armchair traveller alike, it provides an indispensible guide to those places on which this most brilliant of couples left their indelible signatures.
John Baxter has lived in Paris for twenty-five years, for a large part of which he has led literary walks around Paris, visiting sites associated with such authors as Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. His Hemingway's Paris: A User's Guide is available as a Kindle Single. Other prize-winning books about Paris include The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris, and Saint-Germain-Des-Prés: Paris's Rebel Quarter.
Much of the Fitzgeralds' blazing rise and dying fall took place in France. Both The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night were written there, and their experience of les années folles informs such stories as Babylon Revisited, as well as Zelda's only novel, Save Me the Waltz, a vivid snapshot of the Lost Generation's self-indulgent existence along the Côte d'Azur.
Scott Fitzgerald's France: A User's Guide follows the Fitzgeralds during the decade they lived intermittently in Paris and on the Riviera, with excursions to Rome and Capri. For visitor and armchair traveller alike, it provides an indispensible guide to those places on which this most brilliant of couples left their indelible signatures.
John Baxter has lived in Paris for twenty-five years, for a large part of which he has led literary walks around Paris, visiting sites associated with such authors as Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. His Hemingway's Paris: A User's Guide is available as a Kindle Single. Other prize-winning books about Paris include The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris, and Saint-Germain-Des-Prés: Paris's Rebel Quarter.
