Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald

Pure and lovely...to read Zelda's letters is to fall in love with her. -The Washington Post Edited by renowned Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks, with an introduction by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan, this compilation of over three hundred letters tells the couple's epic love story in their own words. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's devotion to each other endured for more than twenty-two years, through the highs and lows of his literary success and alcoholism, and her mental illness. In Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, over 300 of their collected love letters show why theirs has long been heralded as one of the greatest love stories of the 20th century. Edited by renowned Fitzgerald scholars Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks, with an introduction by Scott and Zelda's granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan, this is a welcome addition to the Fitzgerald literary canon. Editorial Reviews Read this book for Zelda, even if you're weary of the cultural obsession with her. Better yet, if you're disinterested entirely, as I was, and perplexed by the cultural fascination...I had a vague sense of her as the prototype for Fitzgerald's lovely, reckless heroines...I was anticipating someone doleful, distracted-not this funny, hard-boiled observer of her own life whose letters read like short stand-up sequences...She remains this way: arch, amused, self-mocking, writing parodies of the kind of simpering love letters expected of young women...She has no secondhand impressions or turns of phrase-everything she writes and thinks feels tart, original, lightly distressing. - The New York Times - Parul Sehgal Zelda writes in direct yet passionate prose, Fitzgerald with a poetic flair reminiscent of his fiction. The result is an engrossing account of their love story -- full of longing and ardor, heartbreak and betrayal...their letters portray something a singular, enigmatic connection. --Paul Alexander, The Washington Post Read this book for Zelda... a funny, hard-boiled observer of her own life whose letters read like short stand-up sequences... She has no secondhand impressions or turns of phrase -- everything she writes and thinks feels tart, original, lightly distressing... after reading these letters what strikes you is [the Fitzgeralds'] steadiness, a shocking word to apply to them... their bond proved stubborn and sturdy, and survived it all. -Parul Sehgal, The New York Times A moving portrait of a two-decades-long, complicated, and deep love affair. --Publishers Weekly A rich, poignant portrait of [the Fitzgeralds'] complicated relationship. --The Baltimore Sun This exceptionally moving correspondence reveals two ardent and creative souls struggling with the ruthless demands of the artistic imperative. --Booklist A boon for general readers as well as literary scholars. --Kirkus Reviews Bryer and Barks's work leads readers through one of the most passionate love affairs of the twentieth century. --Montgomery Advertiser The flamboyant Jazz Age couple were devoted letter writers... Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda tells their love story in their own words. --Garden & Gun - From the Publisher The love story of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald is one of the most famous in American history and literature. Many books have been written about their twenty-two relationship. Now, for the first time, here is the story of their love as seen through the prism of the couple's own letters to each other. The book includes valuable commentary on the missives by noted Fitzgerald scholars Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks. - Vito F Sinisi These letters, many never before published, suggest that Scott and Zelda were both, at heart, Protestants, not voluptuaries; what comes through most clearly in this collection is their dogged, back-bowed faith in work and their dependence on each other. When, in 1918, a young lieutenant with literary pretensions began courting a Montgomery coquette, a fervid correspondence was launched. Scott, a compulsive archivist, saved his wife's letters; most of the ones he sent Zelda have been lost. Luckily, Zelda is an extravagant and funny correspondent, and watching her transformation from ingenue (I love being rather unfathomable) to survivor is heart-rending. In 1939, the year before his death, she wrote her husband, I am always loyal to the concepts that held us to-gether so long: the belief that life is tragic, that a mans spiritual reward is the keeping of his faith: that we shouldn't hurt each other. . . . Nothing could have survived our life. - New Yorker Once we were one person, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his wife in the last years of their marriage, and always it will be a little that way. While this carefully annotated collection (edited by two scholars at the University of Maryland) is dominated by Zelda's letters more of hers are extant it provides an intimate account of an enduring romantic union (as opposed to the dirty laundry of the Fitzgeralds' spectacular Jazz Age revels and rows or Scott's descent into alcoholism and Zelda's into mental illness). Their cross-Mason-Dixon Line courtship letters begin in 1918, with Zelda displaying her ardor and mental wickedness and Scott responding in brief but affectionate telegrams. The Great Depression coincided with Zelda's psychological malaise, and her letters from the '30s are penned from various sanitariums and, later, her family's home in Alabama, where she convalesced under her mother's care. Scott's letters are sufficiently represented only in his final year, when he was exiled to Hollywood as a scriptwriter and had a secretary to keep copies. Among the mutual assurances of love and the occasional long-distance tiffs, Scott and Zelda sometimes discuss art Zelda's search for self-expression in writing, dance and painting; Scott's desire to be an instrument for dark, tragic destiny. Although Scott's letters, typically written in his high lyric style, are unfortunately outnumbered, this collection offers many previously unpublished epistles and photographs as well as an introduction by the Fitzgeralds' granddaughter, and is a moving portrait of a two-decades-long, complicated and deep love affair. (Apr.) Forecast: The Fitzgeralds remain a popular literary couple Nancy Milford's three-decades-old Zelda still sells well so there should be demand for this collection. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly This collection of letters by the Fitzgeralds to each other covers their entire relationship, from their courtship in 1918 to Scott's death in 1940. While a number of these letters have been published before (in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters and Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings, both edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli), many are being published here for the first time. The editors, both literature professors at the University of Maryland, are the first to gather the correspondence between the Fitzgeralds in one volume. The letters are presented in four parts: courtship and marriage, the years together, Zelda's three breakdowns, and the final two years of marriage. Many of the letters, especially in Part 3, are by Zelda, so this collection lets the reader sample the full range of her thoughts and emotions and helps correct mistaken impressions of the marriage left by past biographies. The editors' introductions and historical narratives are helpful in giving the broader contexts of the couple's lives and times, as are the photographs and explanatory footnotes. Recommended for medium and larger public libraries. Morris Hounion, New York City Technical Coll. Lib., Brooklyn Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information. - Library Journal Carefully annotated trove of correspondence between Jazz Age icons. Scott Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre in the closing months of WWI, when he was stationed near Montgomery, Alabama. Mutually infatuated, the two soon married. Scott set out on an ambitious campaign to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived; not content merely to be a muse, Zelda studied to become a ballerina. All the while they traveled, cavorted, drank, made headlines, and wrote back and forth to each other. This fine collection of letters charts the course of their marriage, from storybook romance to eventual estrangement, the result of Scott's alcoholism and Zelda's descent into mental illness. Bryer and Barks (both Literature/Univ. of Maryland) provide useful headnotes and footnotes to the correspondence, which rivals the love letters of Abelard and Heloise in thoughtful billing and cooing while enumerating a range of betrayals and dissatisfactions. The editors suggest that the Fitzgeralds' marriage was doomed from the outset, given their respective illnesses, but they conclude, taking issue with some biographers, It is no more reasonable to say that Scott drove his wife mad than it is to say that Zelda drove her husband to drink. Both spouses emerge from these letters as hardworking, intelligent, damaged people; readers may be surprised by the readiness of Zelda's wit, even during her years of confinement in mental institutions. (Asking Scott to send books in 1931, for instance, she specifies not [D. H.] Lawrence and not Virginia Woolf or anybody who writes by dipping the broken threads of their heads into the ink of literary history.) Some of the letters have been published before; others have beenparaphrased or briefly quoted in literary studies and biographies such as Nancy Milford's now-standard Zelda (1970). To have them all so well presented in one volume is useful indeed. A boon for general readers as well as literary scholars. - Kirkus Reviews