The Beautiful and Damned

Published in 1922 by Charles Scribner's, The Beautiful and Damned was Fitzgerald's second novel. The plot concerned the relationship between Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria, taking in an element of Patch's army service, and Gloria's alcoholism. If there is a theme, it's concerned with creating a purpose in life besides the more selfish obsessions such as money and hedonism. That the Patch's don't find such a purpose gives a sufficient clue to their fate. There's more than a whiff of the autobiographical about the novel, but in dealing with the Jazz Age as a theme (of which Fitzgerald was a constituent part), it takes in a more social element. Despite not being received on quite the level as his first novel, the initial print run of twenty thousand was extended to produce a first edition totalling some fifty thousand.