Tales of the Jazz Age

First published in 1922, Tales of the Jazz Age is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second collection of short stories, a vivid and often mischievous portrait of an America caught between the exhilaration of modern life and the disillusionment that followed the First World War. Across eleven stories, Fitzgerald moves between fashionable society, restless young romantics, extravagant fortunes, and the stranger possibilities of the imagination. In The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, a young man encounters a family whose unimaginable wealth conceals a sinister secret, while The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttonfollows the extraordinary life of a man who ages in reverse. Elsewhere, the celebrated May Day brings together returning soldiers, wealthy revellers, and political unrest in a New York struggling to understand the consequences of peace.

Published two years after Flappers and Philosophers, the collection reveals Fitzgerald broadening his literary ambitions beyond the sparkling romances that had first established his reputation. Its mixture of satire, fantasy, social observation, and melancholy examines the seductive power of wealth, the uncertainties of youth, and the uneasy divisions beneath America's newfound prosperity. Fitzgerald’s wit and imaginative extravagance are balanced by an increasingly perceptive understanding of disappointment and the fragility of happiness, anticipating the concerns that would find their fullest expression in The Great Gatsby. Both an enchanting introduction to his shorter fiction and a revealing record of a writer discovering the extent of his gifts, Tales of the Jazz Age captures the brilliance and contradictions of the era Fitzgerald helped immortalise.

From the book

“I was in that familiar mood characterized by a perfect craving for luxury.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tales of the Jazz Age

On Tales of the Jazz Age

“They certainly show a development in his art, a new turn.”

— Hildegarde Hawthorne, The New York Times, 29 October 1922