Flappers and Philosophers | Фицджеральд Фрэнсис Скотт Кей (Fitzgerald Francis Scott); Alma Books, 2019

Considered one of the finest American writers of the twentieth century, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was the author of various novels and short stories chronicling life in the US during the Roaring Twenties.

Published soon after Fitzgerald's debut novel This Side of Paradise, Flappers and Philosophers was the author's first collection of short fiction, a form through which he had gained notoriety in newspapers and magazines. The familiar themes of aspiration and social satire already permeate his writing: in 'Bernice Bobs Her Hair' the fashionable Marjorie attempts to turn her dowdy cousin into a debutante, before betraying her out of jealousy, while 'The Ice Palace' features a Southern belle whose engagement to a Northerner finds her confronted with a cultural clash between tradition and modernity.

Also containing 'The Offshore Pirate', 'Head and Shoulders', 'The Cut-Glass Bowl', 'Benediction', 'Dalyrimple Goes Wrong' and 'The Four Fists', this volume of stories illustrates the early stages of Fitzgerald's development as a writer and provides an entertaining chronicle of America in the 1910s.

He was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a generation.