The Basil and Josephine StoriesFourteen of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best-loved and most beguiling stories, together in a single volume In 1928, while struggling with his novel Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald began writing a series of stories about Basil Duke Lee, a fictionalized version of his younger self. Drawing on his childhood and adolescent experiences, Fitzgerald wrote nine tales that were published in the Saturday Evening Post about his life from the time he was an eleven-year-old boy living in Buffalo, New York, until he entered Princeton University in 1913. Then from 1930 to 1931, with Tender Is the Night still unfinished, Fitzgerald wrote five more stories (also published in the Post) that centered around Josephine Perry, Basil's female counterpart. Although Fitzgerald intended to combine the fourteen Basil Lee and Josephine Perry stories into a single work, he never succeeded in doing so in his lifetime. Here, The Basil and Josephine Stories brings together in one volume the complete set, resulting in one of Fitzgerald's most charming and evocative works. |
Contents
Introduction | 7 |
Textual Note and Acknowledgments | 27 |
That Kind of Party | 33 |
The Scandal Detectives | 47 |
A Night at the Fair | 69 |
The Freshest Boy | 87 |
He Thinks Hes Wonderftxl | 111 |
The Captured Shadow | 134 |
Forging Ahead | 182 |
Basil and Cleopatra | 202 |
First Blood | 225 |
A Nice Quiet Place | 243 |
A Woman with a Past | 264 |
A Snobbish Story | 285 |
Emotional Bankruptcy | 309 |
Life and Career | 329 |
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Common terms and phrases
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