Between the Covers

Hardcover. First edition. Green cloth gilt. Else near fine with the gilt on the spine a little dull but easily readable, a very faint ring stain on front board, and front free endpaper creased and a tear expertly mended, lacking the rare dust jacket. Housed in a custom cloth clamshell case with morocco spine label gilt. One of 5000 copies of the first edition of Fitzgerald's second book, and his first collection of short stories. This copy bears a full-page Inscription by Fitzgerald in which he ranks the stories in the book:

"[erased name]
alias
Hardwick Nevin who was
a tremendously good sport
about my attempt at irony in
This Side of Paradise.

Pretty good
Benediction
The Cut Glass Bowl
The Ice Palace
Dalyrimple Goes Wrong
Amusing
The Off Shore Pirate
Bernice Bobs Her Hair

Popular but cheap
Head & Shoulders
The Four Fists

Ever,
F. Scott Fitzgerald"

Hardwick Nevin, a Princeton classmate of Fitzgerald's, was a poet, theatre actor, and playwright, who had served in the American Field Ambulance Corps with Malcolm Cowley in WWI and was awarded the Croix de Guerre after being wounded twice. Nevin was also the host of a party in Greenwich Village in April 1920 in which fellow classmates Edmund Wilson and John Peale Biship first met Edna St. Vincent Millay, and both fell in love with her.

According to Fitzgerald's manuscript *Outline Chart of My Life*, he continued to socialize with Hardwicke Nevin following the War, noting he (and Zelda?) was a guest of Nevin in May of 1920, just a few months before this title was released. Possibly sensing some friction between the two at the time, Fitzgerald used the publication of this book in September of the same year, to apologize to Nevin (sort of) for basing a character in *This Side of Paradise* on him. We suspect it didn't work given that Nevin thoroughly erasing the character name in quotation marks at the top of the inscription, with only the marks on the right side still visible. While the basis for many of the character in *This Side of Paradise* are known or suspected, Nevin is completely overlooked by the scholarship we've examined.

A detailed and fascinating inscription by the young 23-year-old author, containing both a veiled apology for *This Side of Paradise*, which fictionally reflected the activities of the Princeton Class of 1916-17, and a self-conscious appraisal of his own short stories. A splendid volume.

Item #468988