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In the autumn of 1919, F. Scott Fitzgerald was repairing train roofs in St. Paul and living on the top floor of his parents' house, having been turned down by Scribner's and by the woman he wanted to marry. Then a telegram arrived: Scribner's would publish his novel. Within months he was the voice of the Jazz Age. Twenty years later he died in Hollywood at 44, believing himself forgotten, with a fifth novel unfinished and bookshops no longer stocking his books. This guide covers all five novels in order, his short story collections and everything published after his death, and where to start.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 novels · 160+ stories · 1920–1941 · Updated September 2026
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Quick answer
F. Scott Fitzgerald finished four novels: This Side of Paradise (1920), The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934). A fifth, The Last Tycoon, was unfinished when he died in 1940 and was published in 1941. In his lifetime he also published four short story collections and a play, and he wrote more than 160 short stories in all. The Great Gatsby is the place to start.
Where to Start with F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you read only one
→ The Great Gatsby (1925).
If you loved Gatsby and want more
→ Tender Is the Night (1934), then the stories “Winter Dreams”, which he called his first attempt at the Gatsby idea, and “Babylon Revisited”.
If you want his stories
→ Babylon Revisited and Other Stories (1960), ten of the best in one book.
If you want to see where it began
→ This Side of Paradise (1920).
If you want Hollywood
→ The Last Tycoon (1941), then The Pat Hobby Stories (1962).
All 5 F. Scott Fitzgerald Novels, in Order
This Side of Paradise
His first novel follows Amory Blaine through his years at Princeton and his romances, drawn closely from Fitzgerald's own college years and from his loves Ginevra King and Zelda Sayre. Scribner's had turned down an earlier version, The Romantic Egotist; Fitzgerald rewrote it in his parents' house in St. Paul, mixing prose with letters, poetry and fragments. Published on March 26, 1920, it sold around 40,000 copies in its first year and made him a household name. Zelda, who had broken off their engagement, married him eight days later.
The Beautiful and Damned
Anthony Patch, a young man waiting to inherit a fortune, and his wife, Gloria, drift into drink, idleness and debt in New York. Fitzgerald modelled Anthony on himself and Gloria on Zelda, and lifted sentences from Zelda's diary; asked to review the book, she wrote that she recognised parts of an old diary that had mysteriously disappeared after her marriage. It was serialised in Metropolitan Magazine before Scribner's published it in March 1922, and it went through printings totalling 50,000 copies.
The Great Gatsby
Nick Carraway tells the story of his neighbour on Long Island, Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire whose lavish parties are all meant for one guest, Daisy Buchanan. Fitzgerald drew on his own years on Long Island, on a bootlegger neighbour, Max Gerlach, who said “old sport”, and on his lost first love, Ginevra King; the working title was Trimalchio. Published on April 10, 1925, it was praised by Willa Cather, T. S. Eliot and Edith Wharton, yet sold fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Its revival came after his death: during the Second World War more than 123,000 copies went to American troops, and by 1960 it was selling 100,000 copies a year.
Tender Is the Night
Dick Diver, a brilliant young American psychiatrist, marries Nicole, a wealthy patient, and their glamorous life among the rich on the French Riviera slowly comes apart. Fitzgerald wrote it after Zelda's breakdown and hospitalisations, and reshaped the young actress Rosemary Hoyt around Lois Moran, a film star he had fallen for in Hollywood. Published in April 1934, in the depths of the Depression, it received mixed reviews and sold about 12,000 copies in its first three months. In 1951 Malcolm Cowley published a version that reorders the story chronologically, so check which edition you are buying.
The Last Tycoon
Monroe Stahr, a brilliant, overworked film producer modelled on Irving Thalberg, runs a Hollywood studio in the 1930s. Fitzgerald was writing it in his spare time as a struggling screenwriter, and died of a heart attack in December 1940 with the novel unfinished. His friend Edmund Wilson assembled it from the manuscript and Fitzgerald's notes and published it in 1941, in the same volume as The Great Gatsby, which helped revive interest in him. Matthew J. Bruccoli's scholarly edition of 1993 uses Fitzgerald's own title, The Love of the Last Tycoon.
How Many Books Did F. Scott Fitzgerald Write?
Nine books appeared in his lifetime. Everything else was published after he died, believing himself a failure.
- Four finished novels — This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night. Read the entries →
- One unfinished novel — The Last Tycoon, published in 1941. Read the entry →
- Four story collections — from Flappers and Philosophers (1920) to Taps at Reveille (1935).
- One play — The Vegetable (1923).
- After his death — more story collections, essays, notebooks and letters, from The Crack-Up (1945) to I'd Die for You (2017). See the full list →
In What Order to Read F. Scott Fitzgerald
His novels are not connected, and each one is better written than the last, so there are two good ways to read him: start with Gatsby, or follow him as he grew.
In publication order
1. This Side of Paradise (1920)
2. The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
3. The Great Gatsby (1925)
4. Tender Is the Night (1934)
5. The Last Tycoon (1941, unfinished)
Everything Else F. Scott Fitzgerald Wrote: The Full List
He wrote far more stories than novels, and most of his work reached book form only after his death. This is the rest: the four story collections he published himself, the stories, essays and letters collected later, his one play, and the early version of Gatsby. The books I would point you to first sit at the top of each form, with where to buy them.
Open a form with the + to see every book in it.
Short story collections in his lifetime
4
4 books · 1920–1935
Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
8 stories, including “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” and “The Ice Palace”.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
11 stories, including “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
All the Sad Young Men (1926)
9 stories, including “Winter Dreams”, “The Rich Boy” and “Absolution”.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Taps at Reveille (1935)
18 stories, including “Babylon Revisited”.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Stories published after his death
7
7 books · 1951–2017
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories (1960)
Ten of his best-known stories in one volume.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
The Pat Hobby Stories (1962)
All 17 stories about Pat Hobby, a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
I'd Die for You: And Other Lost Stories (2017)
18 stories, scenarios and fragments.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
- 1951The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald28 stories, ten of them not collected before
- 1973The Basil and Josephine Stories14 linked stories about two young people who never meet
- 1974Bits of Paradisestories by Fitzgerald and by Zelda Fitzgerald
- 1979The Price Was High50 stories never collected before
Essays, letters and a play
6
6 books · 1923–2000
The Crack-Up (1945)
Essays, notebooks and letters, edited by Edmund Wilson.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Dear Scott/Dear Max (1971)
His correspondence with his editor, Maxwell Perkins.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters (1994)
A selection of his letters.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby (2000)
The novel as it stood before his final revisions.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
- 1923The Vegetablehis only play, whose premiere was a disaster
- 1958Afternoon of an Author13 stories and 7 essays
Quick facts about F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Born
- September 24, 1896, Saint Paul, Minnesota
- Died
- December 21, 1940, Los Angeles, aged 44
- Full name
- Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, after his distant cousin Francis Scott Key
- Education
- Princeton University, which he left in 1917 without a degree to join the Army
- Married
- Zelda Sayre, in 1920; their daughter, Frances “Scottie”, was born in 1921
- Novels
- 4 finished and 1 unfinished, from This Side of Paradise (1920) to The Last Tycoon (1941)
- Short stories
- More than 160, many for The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and Esquire
- Editor
- Maxwell Perkins, at Scribner's
- Coined
- Popularised the term “the Jazz Age”, with Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
- Hollywood
- MGM screenwriter from 1937; his only screen credit was Three Comrades (1938)
How F. Scott Fitzgerald Wrote: Novels for Art, Stories for Money
Fitzgerald collected more than 120 rejection slips before his first novel was accepted, and early on he wrote his sentences by ear, which left his first book full of slips that editors noticed. Each novel after that was more carefully built than the one before. For The Great Gatsby he set out to write something consciously artistic, learning from Joseph Conrad and from Willa Cather's A Lost Lady.
His stories paid for his life. At the height of his fame The Saturday Evening Post paid him $4,000 a story, and he could write seventeen in a year, but he often reworked them to suit the magazines, a habit Hemingway despised. That split, between the novels he wrote as art and the stories he wrote for money, runs through his whole career.
So does one subject. He grew up, as one biographer put it, a poor boy in a rich town, and he said the whole idea of Gatsby was the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money. By 1936 his book royalties came to $80. He died believing he had failed; twenty years later Gatsby was selling 100,000 copies a year.
Listen: F. Scott Fitzgerald reads Othello
Recordings of Fitzgerald's voice are rare. In this one, made in California around 1940, he reads a slightly edited version of Othello's speech to the Venetian senators from Act 1, Scene 3. Why he made the recordings is not known. The University of South Carolina also holds his readings of Keats's “Ode to a Nightingale” and Masefield's “On Growing Old”: listen to the other two recordings.Frequently asked questions about F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
How many novels did F. Scott Fitzgerald write?
F. Scott Fitzgerald finished four novels: This Side of Paradise (1920), The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934). A fifth, The Last Tycoon, was unfinished when he died in 1940 and was published in 1941.
How many books did F. Scott Fitzgerald write?
Nine books were published in his lifetime: four novels, four short story collections (Flappers and Philosophers, Tales of the Jazz Age, All the Sad Young Men and Taps at Reveille) and one play, The Vegetable. Many more appeared after his death, including The Last Tycoon, The Crack-Up and several collections of stories and letters.
What are F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels in order?
In order of publication: This Side of Paradise (1920), The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925), Tender Is the Night (1934) and the unfinished The Last Tycoon (1941).
What novel did Fitzgerald publish in 1920?
This Side of Paradise, his first novel, published by Scribner's on March 26, 1920. His first short story collection, Flappers and Philosophers, followed later the same year.
What was F. Scott Fitzgerald's first book?
His first book was the novel This Side of Paradise (1920), a rewritten version of a manuscript called The Romantic Egotist that Scribner's had earlier rejected.
What is F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous book?
The Great Gatsby (1925), often called a contender for the Great American Novel.
Was The Great Gatsby a success when it came out?
Not commercially. Writers including Willa Cather, T. S. Eliot and Edith Wharton praised it, but it sold fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year and sold poorly for the rest of Fitzgerald's life. Its popularity grew after his death, helped by free copies given to American soldiers during the Second World War.
Did F. Scott Fitzgerald finish The Last Tycoon?
No. He died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, while still writing it. Edmund Wilson edited the unfinished manuscript and Fitzgerald's notes for publication in 1941, and a later scholarly edition appeared in 1993 as The Love of the Last Tycoon.
Did F. Scott Fitzgerald write The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?
Yes. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is a short story first published in Collier's in 1922 and collected in Tales of the Jazz Age the same year. It was adapted into a film with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in 2008.
How many short stories did F. Scott Fitzgerald write?
More than 160. Many were written for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire; among the best known are “Winter Dreams”, “The Rich Boy”, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” and “Babylon Revisited”.
Which F. Scott Fitzgerald book should I read first?
The Great Gatsby. It is his most famous novel, and also one of his shortest. If you enjoy it, go on to Tender Is the Night.
Is The Great Gatsby in the public domain?
In the United States, yes: The Great Gatsby entered the public domain on January 1, 2021. Copyright rules differ in other countries.
Footnotes
- F. Scott Fitzgerald — Wikipedia
- Voice Clips: F. Scott Fitzgerald — University of South Carolina Libraries
- Fitzgerald Reading Shakespeare and Keats — Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America
- F. Scott Fitzgerald bibliography — Wikipedia
- Babylon Revisited and Other Stories — Wikipedia
- Fitzgerald Bibliographies — University of South Carolina Libraries
- F. Scott Fitzgerald: An Annotated Bibliography — scott-fitzgerald.com
Bibliography last verified 10 September 2026.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
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