THE FOLIO SOCIETY

‘As he put in his studs he realised that he was enjoying life as he would probably never enjoy it again. Everything was hallowed by the haze of his own youth’

Intent upon rebelling against his cloying, conservative Mid-Western upbringing, Amory Blaine immediately falls in love with Princeton, seeing in its romantic spires and rolling green lawns his own dreams and aspirations. Amory’s coming of age – his egotistical years at prep school, the glittering snobbery of college life, his infatuation with shallow debutante Rosalind, and the subsequent horror of the First World War – mirrors much of Fitzgerald’s early life. Published in 1920, when he was just 23, This Side of Paradise brilliantly captures the petulant, flamboyant cadence of youth – the handsome slickers and irrepressible flappers, petting parties, drinking and fast cars that epitomised the Jazz Age. But in his poignant quest for identity, Amory is also forced to confront bigger questions about innocence and evil, obscurity and fame, past and future, in a world ‘grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken’.