Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$500.00 + shipping
Description: 408 p. 20 cm. Title page vignette and 68 other b&w drawings and decorations. Grey cloth hardcover. Slight soiling to covers. Ex library with ink stamps on endpapers. Pages 402-403 tore slightly when cut. Fitzgerald's fourth and final completed novel first published in Scribner's Magazine between January and April 1934. The title is taken from the poem "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats. While the novel received only a lukewarm reception upon its initial release, it is now accepted as one of Fitzgerald's most accomplished works. First edition, second issue (no A on copyright page).
Seller: Attic Books (ABAC, ILAB), London, ON, Canada
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender is the Night. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1934.
Price: US$1350.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: 8vo, 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches (190 x 132 mm); pp. vii + 408, printed in Old Style type on wove paper; pen and ink drawings (33 head-pieces and 35 tail-pieces) by Edward Shenton (1895-1977). Blue T-cloth binding, blind-stamped single rule frame on front, gilt title on spine, top and bottom edges trimmed; no dust jacket, paper gutter cracked at inside second f.f.l., but binding is square and solid; paper evenly toned with some light dampstain at top of some pages. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING, with the year 1934 on the title page and the letter "A" on the copyright page, with the Scribner's Seal. [Bruccoli A 15.I.a]. Tender Is the Night is the fourth and final novel completed by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, and one that the author considered to be his masterwork. Set in French Riviera during the twilight of the Jazz Age, the 1934 novel chronicles the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist, and his wife, Nicole, who is one of his patients. The story mirrors events in the lives of the author and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald as Dick starts his descent into alcoholism and Nicole descends into mental illness. Scribner's Magazine serialized the novel in four installments between January and April 1934 before its publication on April 12, 1934. Following Fitzgerald's death in 1940, Tender Is the Night's critical reputation has steadily grown. Later critics have described it as "an exquisitely crafted piece of fiction" and "one of the greatest American novels". It is now widely regarded as among Fitzgerald's most accomplished works, with some agreeing with the author's assessment that it surpasses The Great Gatsby. The novel was adapted for film, television, the theater and ballet.
Seller: Rob Zanger Rare Books LLC, Middletown, NY, U.S.A.
FITZGERALD, F. SCOTT. Typed Letter Signed [TLS]. np, Baltimore, MD, 1934.
Price: US$35000.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: IMPORTANT AND REVEALING LETTER BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD ON HIS LITERARY INFLUENCES AND GROWTH AS A WRITER. It is rare that we get to read first hand about a writer's influences, especially during the formative years, but in answer to a letter from the scholar Egbert S. Oliver, Fitzgerald - with his characteristic wit -offers us details about his early literary education. The letter, partially quoted in Matthew Bruccoli's definitive biography, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, reads in full: 1307 Park Avenue Baltimore, Maryland January 7, 1934 Mr. Egbert S. Oliver Willamette University Salem Oregon Dear Mr. Oliver: The first help I ever had in writing in my life was from my father who read an utterly imitative Sherlock Holmes story of mine and pretended to like it. But after that I received the most invaluable aid from Mr. C. N. B. Wheeler then headmaster of the St. Paul Academy now the St. Paul Country Day School in St. Paul, Minnesota. 2. From [a] Mr. Hume, then co-headmaster of the Newman School and now headmaster of the Canterbury School. 3. From Courtland Van Winkle in freshman year at Princeton - now professor of literature at Yale (he gave us the book of Job to read and I don't think any of our preceptorial group ever quite recovered from it.) After that comes a lapse. Most of the professors seemed to me old and uninspired, or perhaps it was just that I was getting under way in my own field. I think this answers your question. This is also my permission to make full use of it with or without my name. Sorry I am unable from circumstances of time and pressure to go into it further. Sincerely, [signed] F. Scott Fitzgerald Fitzgerald attended the St. Paul Academy from 1908 - 1911 (from the ages of 12 to 16) and Broccoli underscores the influence in particular of C.N.B. Wheeler on Fitzgerald, noting that he was the only one of his teachers who encouraged him to write. (Fitzgerald published his first work of fiction in the school newspaper.) Fitzgerald's note that after Courtland Van Winkle in his freshman year at Princeton he "was getting under way in my own field" was certainly true, for it was shortly after his class with Van Winkle that Fitzgerald began work on what would become his sparkling debut novel, This Side of Paradise. The "circumstances of time and pressure" Fitzgerald mentions at the end of the letter were very real. This letter was written in January 1934 just as Tender is the Night was beginning to appear serially in Scribner's Magazine, and then in book form on April 12, 1934. The letters surrounding the Oliver letter in Fitzgerald's collected letters are frantic letters to his editor Max Perkins working out details for the first edition of Tender is the Night. The recipient, Egbert S. Oliver, was a prominent scholar of American literature. He was Professor of American Literature at Willamette University and Portland State University and wrote numerous books on American literature and American life. The Egbert S. Oliver papers now reside at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University. Provenance: Listed in F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Marketplace (Bruccoli and Baughman, 2009, p.31) as having been sold at Charles Hamilton Auction, 14 September, 1972. Typed letter signed with two hand-corrections in ink. Baltimore, Maryland, 1934. Two pages, 8.5'' x 11'' each; attractively matted and framed alongside a photo of Fitzgerald to an overall size of 32'' x 17.5''. Usual folds, paperclip imprint at top left of first page; otherwise fine. References: -Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. - Matthew J. Bruccoli, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Life in Letters, Scribner, 2010. (Published in full). -Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, editors. F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Marketplace, University of South Carolina Press, 2009.
Seller: Manhattan Rare Book Company, ABAA, ILAB, New York, NY, U.S.A.