The publication of _The Beautiful and Damned_ confirmed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s place in the pantheon of great American writers. The story chronicles the courtship, fraught marriage, and social demise of Anthony Patch, the presumptive heir to a tycoon’s fortune, and Gloria Gilbert, a ravishing society girl. Brilliant and scathing, it is a dazzling tale of lost youth and dissipation that spares no one—least of all the protagonists who resemble, in substance if not circumstance, Fitzgerald himself and his charismatic, capricious wife, Zelda. This vivid portrait of a corrupt, rootless, and boozy age anticipates Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, _The Great Gatsby _ and signals his fascination with the themes that would continue to animate his work.This edition includes a biographical timeline of the author’s life and the full text of Zelda Fitzgerald’s spoof review of _The Beautiful and Damned,_ which appeared in the _New York Tribune._