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The Beautiful and Damned

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£ 11 970
Auction dateClassic
28.09.2023 13:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 1016507
Lot 53 | The Beautiful and Damned
The Beautiful and Damned

F. Scott Fitzgerald

FITZGERALD, F. Scott (1896-1940). The Beautiful and Damned. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922.



Fitzgerald's second novel and one of his most accomplished: first edition in book form, first printing, inscribed twice by the author. The first inscription reads, ‘Sincerely F Scott Fitzgerald’, below which the author returns some years later, with an arrow pointing to the above inscription and the words, ‘Believe it or not this was in this book when it came to me from the Tryon book shop. I must have autographed it for some book-seller years ago + it fell into a stock of remainders. Such is fame. Tryon 1938 I mean 1937’. The Beautiful and Damned brilliantly satirizes a doomed and glamorous marriage (not unlike Fitzgerald’s own) against the boozy backdrop of the Jazz Age. The pre-publication serialization of the complete text appeared in Metropolitan Magazine (September 1921-March 1922), and contained a two-paragraph conclusion Fitzgerald ultimately omitted when he revised it for book publication.



Fitzgerald stayed in the Oak Hall Hotel in the resort town of Tryon, North Carolina from January to June of 1937, while waiting for a film offer from Hollywood. He had stayed there in 1935 while recuperating from a bout of tuberculosis and depressed over Zelda. This volume was presented to Howard P. Ballantyne or members of his family in 1937, when Fitzgerald was living in Tryon. Howard Ballantyne attended Princeton from 1913 to 1917, at some point living in the same dormitory as Fitzgerald. He was the first class president of the class of 1917, elected during his first semester in 1913. Ballantyne, also an aspiring writer, struck up a relationship with Fitzgerald that continued after they left Princeton. In 1916, Ballantyne married Barbara Trego, whose family owned a vacation home in Tryon. They spent many summers there and in Asheville where their sons later attended prep school. Bruccoli A8.I.a.



Octavo. (Light spotting to endpapers.) Original linen-grain green cloth, titled in blind to front board, spine lettered in gilt (spine a little dulled, corners slightly rubbed); original first-issue pictorial dust-jacket, with the title on front panel in outline, supplied from another copy (somewhat darkened, repaired tears to spine and lower panel, several chips with loss to first word of title on spine); custom modern quarter morocco box. Provenance: Howard P. Ballantyne (authorial inscription on front endpaper, not naming the recipient, but sold alongside other presentation copies to Ballantyne in:) – Christie’s, NY, May 22, 2001, lot 230 – Patricia Cornwell (b.1956; bookplate in box and with bookseller’s pencil inscription reading ‘From Library of Patricia Cornwell’).

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