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First edition book: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. First edition, first printing. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920. Hardcover bound in finely woven green cloth, blindstamped on the front boards with very bright gilt on the spine, 5.5 x 8, 305 pages. Book condition: VG-/None, with the classical bookplate of Charles Edwin Fox affixed to front pastedown, small "x" indentation on the front board above the author's blindstamp, and a few small stains to textblock.
Though Fitzgerald did not complete his studies and graduate with the class of 1917, his years at Princeton permanently shaped his life and career. It was in this world of privilege that he devoted himself to finding his voice as a writer, and there that he met the people who would later reappear as characters in his novels—most notably Ginevra King, the muse behind many of his female characters, including Daisy Buchanan. In 1919, Fitzgerald completed and successfully pitched This Side of Paradise to Scribner's; integrating 80 pages of an unpublished novel he had written while at Princeton, and telling the tale of an attractive Princeton student—certainly based on himself—F. Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel is inseparable from his university years.
