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guarded by Ober himself. Over the following months into 1920, a series of Fitzgerald stories was sold to a number of magazines.

      On a personal level, things were also on the up. The engagement between Zelda and Fitzgerald resumed in January 1920, as the author's career began to take shape. Within a few months Fitzgerald found himself a published author when This Side of Paradise was published on March 26. The first print run of 3,000 copies priced at $1.75 sold out in an astonishing three days and it went on to sell close to 50,000 copies. Just over a week after publication, on April 3, Fitzgerald and Zelda married in a low‐key ceremony in the rectory of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Fitzgerald found himself newly married, newly rich, and newly famous. The couple embraced their new life and the freedom that money brought. Parties and excessive drinking were routine. Toward the middle of the year, they rented a house in Westport, Connecticut, where Fitzgerald hoped he would be more productive; it was here that he started his next novel The Beautiful and Damned (1922) that drew heavily on the early days of the Fitzgeralds’ marriage.

Over the next few years, the couple moved regularly with periods spent in St. Paul, New York, and finally Great Neck on Long Island. Despite their somewhat chaotic lives, Fitzgerald published a number of his most significant short stories during this time, such as “May Day” (1920) and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (1920), as well as “The Diamond as Big as The Ritz” and “Winter Dreams,” both published in 1922. A collection of stories appeared in 1920 titled Flappers and Philosophers followed by Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). A third collection of stories would appear more than a decade later, titled Taps at Reveille (1935). However, The Beautiful and Damned's publication in 1922 did not have the same impact either commercially or critically as its predecessor. In the midst of the writing and the partying, the couple's only child—a girl—was born on October 26, 1921, and named for her father: Frances Scott Fitzgerald. She went by Scottie throughout her life. During this period Fitzgerald returned to his previous love of the theatre by writing a play, The Vegetable (1923); however, it failed to impress during a pre‐Broadway run in Atlantic City and, although published, it has garnered little attention from scholars.

      This period of early success is also marked by the beginning of a problem that would haunt Fitzgerald throughout the remainder of his life and contribute considerably to his death, namely his alcoholism. His heavy drinking probably became a physical and psychological addiction by his mid‐twenties at the latest. It interfered with Fitzgerald's work patterns as did Zelda's need for amusement. An intelligent and curious woman, her need for interests outside of her marriage saw her eventually turning toward artistic pursuits of her own. Alongside writing herself she would—at different times in her life—also explore ballet and painting.

      By 1924, Fitzgerald was desperate to break the cycle of having to write short stories to sell them in order to fund a lifestyle that was indulgent and financially reckless. In an attempt to save money, the couple decided to take advantage of the dollar‐franc exchange rate and spend time in Europe. The goal was that Fitzgerald could work uninterrupted on his next novel. Therefore, in the middle of April 1924, the Fitzgeralds were ready to set sail to France and new adventures.

THE GREAT GATSBY AND EUROPEAN TRAVELS (1924–1931)

      After their transatlantic crossing, the Fitzgeralds spent just over a week in Paris where they found a suitable nanny for Scottie before heading down to the Riviera. By June they were settled in the Villa Marie in St Raphaël. Fitzgerald began in earnest the writing of his next novel, which he hoped would be a considerable departure from his commercial fiction and would be sustained by a developed artistic vision. Writing to Max Perkins shortly before their departure to Europe, Fitzgerald reflected on the time that he had wasted in the previous two years. He also articulated his hopes for his new book. It was not to be concerned with “trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world. So I tread slowly and carefully + at times in considerable distress. The book will be a consciously artistic achievment [sic] + must depend on that as the 1st books did not” (Fitzgerald 1994, p. 67).

Through the summer months Fitzgerald worked on his novel and Zelda was largely left to her own devices, often spending time at the beach sunbathing and swimming in the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. During July, she became involved with a French aviator by the name of Edouard Jozan. The exact nature of the relationship between the two is unknown, with Jozan claiming after the deaths of both Fitzgeralds that it was an innocent flirtation. However—whatever the truth—it introduced a wedge between husband and wife which, some biographers have argued, was never fully repaired. Curiously, it was also a traumatic event that both of them drew upon and reimagined—not only in their fiction—but as an ever‐evolving story that the couple shared with friends.

      During this period, the Fitzgeralds met Sara and Gerald Murphy, a glamorous and well‐connected couple who were noted for their exquisite entertaining as well as their artistic group of friends that included Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter, and Jean Cocteau. They would remain friends and frequent correspondents of Fitzgerald for the rest of his life, despite his drunken antics sometimes putting pressure on his relationships with the Murphys and others.

      Fitzgerald spent the remainder of 1924 and the early months of 1925 revising the galley proofs of his novel, which after a series of name changes was now called The Great Gatsby. Much of this work was undertaken in Italy, where the Fitzgeralds spent a number of months in both Rome and Capri. During the process he was in regular contact with his editor, Max Perkins, at Scribner's. In a letter dated October 10, 1924, Fitzgerald wrote to him about an upcoming writer that he had heard of but (up to that point) had not met but believed he would be a good fit for Perkins's editorship. “This is to tell you about a young man named Ernest Hemmingway [sic], who lives in Paris, (an American) writes for the Transatlantic Review + has a brilliant future … I'd look him up right away. He's the real thing” (Fitzgerald 1994, p. 82).

On April 10, 1925, The Great Gatsby was published. Now widely hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, at the time of its publication its significance was missed by the book‐buying public and it had a critical reception that was mixed at best. The initial print run was 20,870 copies priced at $2.00. In August, an additional 3,000 copies were printed, some of which “were still in Scribner's warehouse when Fitzgerald died” (Bruccoli 2002, p. 217). Fellow writers such as Willa Cather and Edith Wharton wrote to Fitzgerald to express their admiration for the novel. Indeed, poet T. S. Eliot had read it three times when he declared it “the first step American fiction has taken since Henry James” in a letter to the author dated December 31, 1925 (Eliot 2009, p. 813). However, the novel failed to have the impact that Fitzgerald had hoped it would have and the disappointment was not easily—if ever—shaken.

      A few weeks after publication, the Fitzgeralds were once again on the move, this time to Paris, where they rented an apartment at 14 rue de Tilsitt. Sometime toward the end of April, Fitzgerald finally met Ernest Hemingway, the writer whom he had praised to Max Perkins some months before. The only detailed record of this first encounter is in Hemingway's posthumously published memoir A Moveable Feast (1964). The accuracy of much of the book is deeply questionable with the depiction of Fitzgerald unflattering and cruel. The pair shared a close friendship for a while and Fitzgerald was crucial in Hemingway moving publishers to Scribner's. He was also instrumental in offering editorial advice to the younger man in relation to his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926). However, the relationship became increasingly strained and antagonistic as the years passed. Max Perkins, editor to both men, acted as an intermediary, communicating to both men about the other.

      Over the next few years, the Fitzgeralds lived at different locations in Paris and the South of France as well as periodic returns to the United States. Both Fitzgeralds were drinking heavily but for Scott the tightening grip of alcoholism was interfering with his productivity. He was in increasing amounts of debt with both Scribner's and Harold Ober despite still being paid considerable sums of money for his short stories. For example, in 1926 according to Fitzgerald's own ledger his income was $25,686.05 (Bruccoli 2002, p. 532). Key events during this period were the beginning of a new novel shortly after the publication of Gatsby

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