THE FOLIO SOCIETY

‘There was nothing, she had said, that she wanted, except to be young and beautiful for a long time, to be gay and happy, and to have money and love’

Anthony Patch, young, spoilt and cynical, still hopes that one day he will ‘accomplish some subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy’, but then he meets feted jazz-baby, Gloria Gilbert. Neither of them give a damn for conventional living, so they seem to make a perfect couple. Marrying on the expectation that someday Anthony will inherit his grandfather’s millions, they drift into a lifestyle far beyond their means. Their life together deteriorates into a sordid round of adultery, alcohol and debt, and contempt gradually takes the place of love. In this powerful evocation of a doomed relationship, Scott Fitzgerald transmuted much of the notoriety and scandal that surrounded his own marriage to Zelda Sayre. A dazzling satirical depiction of individual failure, reckless materialism and the transitory nature of beauty, The Beautiful and Damned holds up a mirror to the generation that lived for the moment – whatever the cost.