The Beautiful and Damned

Fitzgerald's second novel, a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age, is a largely autobiographical depiction of a glamorous, reckless Manhattan couple and their spectacular spiral into tragedy. Published on the heels ofThis Side of Paradise, the story of the Harvard-educated aesthete Anthony Patch and his willful wife, Gloria, is propelled by Fitzgerald's intense romantic imagination and demonstrates an increased technical and emotional maturity.The Beautiful and Damnedis at once a gripping morality tale, a rueful meditation on love, marriage, and money, and an acute social document. As Hortense Calisher observes in her Introduction, "Though Fitzgerald can entrance with stories so joyfully youthful they appear to be safewhen he cuts himself, you will bleed."

<b>Hortense Calisher</b> is the author of twenty-two books, including the National Book Award nominees <i>False Entry, Herself</i>, and <i>The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher</i>. She lives in Manhattan and upstate New York.