The Basil and Josephine Stories

Fourteen of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best-loved and most beguiling stories, together in a single volumeIn 1928, while struggling with his novelTender Is the Night,Fitzgerald began writing a series of stories about Basil Duke Lee, a fictionalized version of his younger self. Drawing on his childhood and adolescent experiences, Fitzgerald wrote nine tales that were published in theSaturday Evening Postabout his life from the time he was an eleven-year-old boy living in Buffalo, New York, until he entered Princeton University in 1913. Then from 1930 to 1931, withTender Is the Nightstill unfinished, Fitzgerald wrote five more stories (also published in thePost)that centered around Josephine Perry, Basil's female counterpart. Although Fitzgerald intended to combine the fourteen Basil Lee and Josephine Perry stories into a single work, he never succeeded in doing so in his lifetime. Here,The Basil and Josephine Storiesbrings together in one volume the complete set, resulting in one of Fitzgerald's most charming and evocative works.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896, attended Princeton University, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre, and the couple divided their time between New York, Paris, and the Riviera, becoming a part of the American expatriate circle that included Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos. Fitzgerald was a major new literary voice, and his masterpieces include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died of a heart attack in 1940 at the age of forty-four, while working on The Love of the Last Tycoon. For his sharp social insight and breathtaking lyricism, Fitzgerald stands as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.