The Great Gatsby Inscribed Modern Library First Edition

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

First Modern Library edition, with the first appearance of Fitzgerald's new introduction. Octavo, original green cloth. Inscribed by the author on the half title page, "For Lillian Abercrombie at the beginning of a tour of work F. Scott Fitzgerald." Fine in a very good dust jacket with some rubbing to the extremities and some small chips. Housed in a full custom morocco box. The first Modern Library edition of The Great Gatsby was a resounding commercial failure, and many copies were remaindered with the caption "discontinued title" printed on the jacket's front panel. The present copy represents one of the earlier, non-remaindered copies, and like all of the first Modern Library editions of The Great Gatsby, features Fitzgerald's new introduction, with his own, now-famous take on his masterwork: "I think it is an honest book, that is to say, that one used none of one's virtuosity to get an effect, and, to boast again, one soft-pedalled the emotional side to avoid the tears leaking from the socket of the left eye, or the large false face peering around the corner of a character's head. If there is a clear conscience, a book can survive -- at least in one's feelings about it. On the contrary, if one has a guilty conscience, one reads what one wants to hear out of reviews. In addition, if one is young and willing to learn, almost all reviews have a value, even the ones that seem unfair."

Music: Mozart - String Quartet No. 20 in D major, K. 499, "Hoffmeister"