This Side of Paradise

For other uses, see This Side of Paradise (disambiguation).

This Side of Paradise
Cover of Fitzgerald's 1920 novel, This Side of Paradise, by illustrator W. E. Hill. The cover's title text is in white font, and the background is dark yellow. The cover depicts a haughty young woman wearing a white dress and holding a hand fan with large white feathers. Behind her, a dashing young man in a dark suit, white shirt, and black bow tie is leaning forward as if to whisper in her ear.
Dust jacket cover of the first edition
AuthorF. Scott Fitzgerald
Cover artistWilliam E. Hill
LanguageEnglish
GenreBildungsroman
PublishedMarch 26, 1920
PublisherCharles Scribner's Sons
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover & paperback)
Followed byThe Beautiful and Damned (1922) 
TextThis Side of Paradise at Wikisource

This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in March 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of unfulfilling romances with flappers. The novel explores themes of love warped by greed and social ambition. Fitzgerald, who took inspiration for the title from a line in Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti,[1] spent years revising the novel before Scribner's accepted it for publication.

Within months of its publication, This Side of Paradise became a sensation in the United States, and reviewers hailed it as an outstanding debut novel.[2][3][4] Overnight, F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name.[5][6] The book went through twelve printings and sold 49,075 copies.[7] While the book did not make him wealthy,[8][9] his newfound fame enabled him to earn higher rates for his short stories,[10] and his improved financial prospects persuaded his fiancée Zelda Sayre to marry him.[11] Although not one of the ten best-selling novels of the year,[7] the novel became popular among college students,[12] and the national press depicted its 23-year-old author as the standard-bearer for "youth in revolt".[13][14][15]

With his debut novel, critics touted Fitzgerald as the first writer to turn the national spotlight upon the so-called Jazz Age generation.[16][17][14] In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Gertrude Stein posited that Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway belonged,[18][19] the Jazz Age generation were younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I and largely untouched by the conflict's horrors.[a][20][21] Fitzgerald's novel riveted the nation's attention on the leisure activities of this hedonistic younger generation and sparked a societal debate over their perceived immorality.[22][23]

As a result of this novel, Fitzgerald became regarded as "the outstanding aggressor in the little warfare which divided our middle classes in the twenties—warfare of moral emancipation against moral conceit, flaming youth against old guard",[24] and, when he died in 1940, social conservatives rejoiced.[25] A year after Fitzgerald's death, essayist Glenway Wescott commented on the novel's lasting impact: "This Side of Paradise haunted the decade like a song, popular but perfect. It hung over an entire youth movement like a banner, somewhat discolored and windworn now; the wind has lapsed out of it. But a book which college boys really read is a rare thing, not to be dismissed idly or in a moment of severe sophistication."[26]

  1. ^ Tate 1998, p. 252; Shinn 1920, p. 8A; Brooke 1918, p. 15.
  2. ^ Mencken 1920, p. 140; Butcher 1920, p. 33; Kazin 1951, p. 119.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Brilliant success was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Wild enthusiasm was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Household name was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference National Figure was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ a b Bruccoli 1981, pp. 136–137.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Not rich was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Novel income was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Story Prices was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Bruccoli 1981, pp. 99–102, 127–28.
  12. ^ Bruccoli 1981, pp. 127–128; Kazin 1951, p. 119.
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference Youth in Revolt was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Generational Consciousness was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference Youth Movement was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference Sons and Daughters was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference Spotlighting the Flappers was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference Gray 1946 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lost Generation Label Rejected was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference Jazz Age Generation was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Fitzgerald 2004, pp. 6–7.
  22. ^ Butcher 1925, p. 11; Coghlan 1925, p. 11.
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference Change in Social Mores was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference Outstanding aggressor was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  25. ^ Kazin 1951, pp. 13, 123, 125.
  26. ^ Kazin 1951, p. 119.


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