14 minSummaryRead it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 286 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 286 pagesAbout this book
A mountain of diamond, a life lived backward, and a dance a penniless young man wants: welcome to Fitzgerald’s restless world.
In Tales of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald gathers eleven short stories where glamour meets unease. The Jelly-Bean follows Jim Powell, a young man in Georgia with no money and no plans, toward a rich girl and the hope of a dance. May Day moves to New York, where a spring day and night reveal a city losing its balance.
The collection moves from parties and flirtations into strange possibilities. The Diamond as Big as the Ritz imagines wealth on a fantastic scale. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button follows a man born old who grows young. In The Camel’s Back, a costume party becomes a comedy of mistaken identity. Together, these tales explore an age that spends freely yet feels restless.
What you’ll discover
- A dance worth wanting Follow Jim Powell into a small-town story where poverty meets the pull of glamour.
- A city off balance Enter the New York of May Day, alive with postwar restlessness across day and night.
- Wealth beyond ordinary limits Discover a mountain made of diamond and a fantasy that tests what money can buy.
- A life in reverse Meet Benjamin Button, whose journey from old age toward youth turns an ordinary life backward.
- Comedy beneath the glamour Enjoy costume-party confusion alongside stories of dances, clubs, quick money, and restless lives.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this book if you like short stories with sharp wit, glittering parties, odd fantasies and quick changes of mood. It suits readers curious about the 1920s.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Bright pleasures sit beside grief
- Jim glimpses the life he wants
- A disguise changes a lover's view
- Public celebration leaves private lives exposed
- Hidden wealth creates its own prison
- Love grows beside a terrible secret
- Reversed age makes belonging uncertain
- Care continues when happiness gives way
- Glamour cannot keep loss away
Who’s who
- Jim PowellA Georgia idler and dice champion who is invited to a country club party and meets a girl who changes his view of himself.
- Perry ParkhurstA young Toledo lawyer who quarrels with his sweetheart and tries to get to a costume ball inside a camel.
- Gordon SterrettA broke Yale man in New York who asks an old friend for money and hopes to see the girl he once loved.
- John T. UngerA schoolboy from Hades who visits a friend's remote home in Montana and falls in love with the friend's sister.
- Benjamin ButtonA man born looking seventy who grows younger each year and tries to find a place among people who age the usual way.
- Merlin GraingerA bookshop clerk in New York who watches a lovely girl across an airshaft and is changed by her one visit.
- Roxanne CurtainA former actress who marries a writer and then cares for him through a sudden, serious illness.
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Tales of the Jazz Age
by F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1922
A dice-shooting loafer, a man inside a camel costume and a mountain of diamond fill these jazz-age tales.
Medium level5–10 hours to read20 languages
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“Jim was a Jelly-bean.”
In short
Would you hand a stranger the money for a camel costume? Would you let a girl pour a car's gasoline on the ground just to clean her shoe?
Tales of the Jazz Age at a glance
- Reading time
- About 5 h 50 min4 h 40 min fast, 6 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 83,400 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1922by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Georgia loafer gets one night among the elite
The Jelly-Bean opens in Tarleton, a sleepy city in southern Georgia. Jim Powell idles through life, hangs about the garage and shoots dice. His family once owned a white house and good land, but all of that is gone. He lives in a bare room above Tilly's Garage.
One spring day his old school friend Clark Darrow invites him to a party at the country club. Jim hides in a corner and watches the girls step out like bright birds. One of them, Nancy Lamar, wears a yellow dress, and Jim feels like a weed in the shade.
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A dice-shooting loafer, a man inside a camel costume and a mountain of diamond fill these jazz-age tales.
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Details
- First published
- 1922
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 6 h 30 min
- Level
- Medium level
- Paperback
- 286 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Hardcover
- 286 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print paperback
- 468 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print hardcover
- 468 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Delivery and returns
- Printed when you order. Usually here in 12 to 14 days.Arrives Wed 2 Dec to Tue 8 Decto United States, printed for you at cost
For Christmas, order by Thu 12 Nov
Cite this edition
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tales of the Jazz Age. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-the-jazz-age.
Fitzgerald, F. S. (2026). Tales of the Jazz Age. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-the-jazz-age (Original work published 1922)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tales of the Jazz Age. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-the-jazz-age.
@book{fitzgerald2026tales,
author = {Fitzgerald, F. Scott},
title = {Tales of the Jazz Age},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-the-jazz-age},
note = {First published 1922}
}
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What is Tales of the Jazz Age about?
It is a collection of eleven stories, sketches and plays by F. Scott Fitzgerald, including pieces dating back to his undergraduate years. They cover young love, parties, money, fantasy and the restless mood of the early 1920s, from Georgia to New York and Montana.
What is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button about?
It follows a man born in Baltimore in 1860 who looks seventy at birth and grows younger every year. Fitzgerald says a remark by Mark Twain inspired it. The story shows how family, love and society respond to him.
What does the term Jazz Age mean in the title?
The Jazz Age is the name Fitzgerald gave to the early 1920s, after the First World War. It describes a time of loud music, new dances, loosened manners, Prohibition and an urge to spend and enjoy.
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.
“Jim was a Jelly-bean.”
More by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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