FITZGERALD, F. Scott.

£4,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Taps at Reveille. First edition of Fitzgerald's final collection of short stories, from the collection of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts (1941-2021), reflecting his fascination with the Jazz Age, with his posthumous bookplate. This copy is a first state with pages 349-52 uncorrected.The stories were written in times of near-constant crisis for Fitzgerald. Zelda's mental health was rapidly declining, straining his financial situation and frustrating his attempts to write the novel that would become Tender is the Night. "Considering the conditions under which he was living and working after 1926, one can only be astounded that Fitzgerald continued to function at all as a writer, let alone that he managed to produce a collection as uniformly impressive as Taps at Reveille... We finally see Fitzgerald at a high spiritual and artistic plateau. Though they often had been difficult, the emotional and artistic lessons of the previous fifteen years had finally led to the creation of what is arguably the most revealing and ultimately serene of F. Scott Fitzgerald's four authorized collections of short fiction" (Petry, pp. 143, 189).Bruccoli notes that the price is "rubberstamped on the front flap of some jackets" in two sizes: 3/16 in. (4.76 mm) and 1/8 in. (3.18 mm) high, with no priority established; this copy has the former variant.

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