14 h 17 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens to love when a promised fortune becomes an excuse not to live?
Anthony Patch has a comfortable Manhattan apartment, a Harvard education, and no job. He expects his grandfather’s fortune to make work unnecessary. Then he meets Gloria Gilbert, a beautiful young woman who prizes freedom and admiration. They fall in love and marry, certain that pleasure and money will carry them forward.
In The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald follows their marriage through New York dinners, parties, travel, and country-house life. Their spending rests on money they have not yet received. Anthony’s grandfather, Adam Patch, condemns drink and idleness. As the couple wait, their days of pleasure put love and purpose under growing pressure.
What you’ll discover
- A fortune worth waiting for Follow Anthony as his hopes of wealth take the place of work and purpose.
- Beauty under pressure Meet Gloria, whose confidence rests on admiration and whose freedom matters deeply to her.
- The glitter of city life Step into restaurants, theatres, and parties where the couple spend money they still await.
- Friends who sharpen the picture Watch Maury Noble mock ambition while Dick Caramel steadily builds a writing career.
- Love without a purpose Explore how waiting and vanity wear down two bright people who expect an easy life.
Who will love it
For readers who love character studies, city life in the 1920s, and stories of love under pressure. A good next step after The Great Gatsby, it explores wealth, glamour and a marriage under strain.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Anthony Patch waits for his grandfather's fortune
- Friends who watch and shape the hero
- Gloria Gilbert enters, and wins him quickly
- A marriage built on pleasure and a promise
- Marietta, wild parties and the drift of drink
- Adam Patch pays a visit that changes everything
- War, strain and the fading of love
- What the novel says about idleness and vanity
- How Fitzgerald builds and tells the story
Who’s who
- Anthony PatchA refined Harvard graduate who lives on small means and large expectations, and who hopes his grandfather's fortune will excuse him from ever having to work.
- Gloria GilbertA strikingly beautiful young woman from the Midwest who prizes freedom and admiration above all, and who dreads the day her looks begin to fade.
- Adam PatchAnthony's wealthy, stern grandfather, a reformer who has spent his later life preaching against drink and idleness, and who controls the family money.
- Maury NobleAnthony's witty, detached friend, who treats life as a performance and offers clever, mocking views on effort, belief and ambition.
- Dick CaramelA friend of Anthony and cousin to Gloria, he is a writer who works steadily and slowly builds a career while others talk.
- Joseph BloeckmanA polite, ambitious film man who rises in the movie business and holds a quiet interest in Gloria.
- Edward ShuttleworthAdam Patch's eager secretary, a smooth, comic figure who serves the old man's wealth and enjoys being close to it.
- Dorothy RaycroftA young Southern woman known as Dot, whom Anthony meets during his army service and who becomes tied to his unsettled life.
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- Audiobook
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- 15-minute summary
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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The Beautiful and Damned
by F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1922
Anthony and Gloria live on the promise of a fortune, while parties and drink wear away their love.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 9
Anthony Patch waits for his grandfather's fortune
The novel opens in 1913, when Anthony Patch is twenty-five. He has finished at Harvard, he has a small income, and he lives in a comfortable New York apartment. He thinks of himself as a serious man of taste. He talks of writing a history of the Middle Ages, and he reads and sketches ideas, but he never quite begins.
His whole future rests on one person, his grandfather Adam Patch. Adam is a rich old man who made his money in business and has since turned to public causes. He is a reformer who lectures on morals and campaigns against drink and vice. Anthony is his only close heir, and the old man's money hangs over the young man like weather.
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What is The Beautiful and Damned about?
It follows Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert, a glamorous young couple in New York who marry and live lavishly while waiting for Anthony's grandfather's fortune. Their idle, party-filled life slowly damages their love, their health and their sense of purpose.
Is The Beautiful and Damned based on Fitzgerald's own life?
It is fiction, but many readers see links to Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, who were young, admired and fond of fast living when he wrote it. Anthony and Gloria are invented characters, not portraits.
When was The Beautiful and Damned written and published?
Fitzgerald published it in 1922, as his second novel, after This Side of Paradise. It first appeared in a magazine and then as a book. The story runs from 1913 into the years after the First World War.
The author
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1896–1940 · American novelist
F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American novelist and short-story writer, born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He lived in the United States and France. He published This Side of Paradise in 1920, The Beautiful and Damned in 1922, and The Great Gatsby in 1925. He died in Hollywood in 1940.
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