Description
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD. TENDER IS THE NIGHT: A Romance. 1934. First edition, first printing, in first state dust jacket.
Decorations by Edward Shenton
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons
Nine years after THE GREAT GATSBY Fitzgerald finally had his second (or first, in some critics’ opinions) best novel published. Fitzgerald labored on the manuscript while Zelda Fitzgerald was in John Hopkins for psychiatric care. The Jazz Age had ended and America was slowly gathering up the shards, attempting reconstruction. In the meantime, Fitzgerald was desperately trying to reconstruct his life, moving back and forth from Baltimore, Asheville, New York, and Hollywood. He published numerous short stories to keep “Finnegan financed,” some of these his best; but TENDER IS THE NIGHT would be his most in-depth of human character achievement. Perhaps not the beginning of the psychological novel, but certainly one of the finest.
Book condition: very good plus overall; interior pages near fine, with some light toning yet very little foxing; no writing on endpapers or interior pages; book condition; clean, generally bright, gold print on spine only lightly faded, yet spine shows some sunning.
First printing, before corrections in the second and third printings. “A” on copyright page.
Dust jacket is first state with reviews by T. S. Eliot, H. L. Mencken, and Paul Rosenfeld. Dust jacket condition: spine shows sunning, front and back panels exhibit some fading; original “$2.50” price is still intant; head and toe of spine have seen marginal repair; hinges have been recinforced with museum conservation tape, neutral pH, acid-free.
408 pages.
COLORADO ARTIFACTUAL
