Arthur Mizener (Editor)
The Fitzgerald Reader.
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963. First edition. xxvii/509 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.25" x 8.75", is bound in quarter black cloth and red paper-covered boards, with faded gilt lettering to spine. Facsimile of author's signature appears on front cover. Book displays light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Interior is clean and bright. Dust jacket, with price of $7.50 on front flap, exhibits very minor wear at edges of rear panel. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"Arthur Mizener, critic, reviewer, and author of "The Far Side of Paradise," the first full biography of Fitzgerald, has edited and made selections for this Reader. In an acute and comprehensive introduction, he correlates Fitzgerald's  work in terms of the writer's thematic and technical progress. He has organized the selections into four distinct periods of Fitzgerald's career. This first is represented by six short stories -- "May Day," "Winter Dreams," "Absolution," "The Rich Boy," and "Basil and Cleopatra," and "The Sensible Thing" -- and by what many critics regard as his masterpiece, "The Great Gatsby," presented here in its entirety. The second includes four stories, among them "Babylon Revisted" and "Crazy Sunday," the essay "Echoes of the Jazz Age," and the haunting opening passages of "Tender Is the Night." The third period shows Fitzgerald coming out of the most serious crisis of his career with three remarkable essays -- "The Crack Up," "Pasting It Together," and "Handle with Care." Five late short stories and two passages from his unfinished novel, "The Last Tycoon," complete the selections."