Flappers and Philosophers

The Jazz Age’s first dispatch — a glittering mosaic of cynicism, champagne, and dreams already on the verge of unraveling.

Hot off the success of This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald was suddenly rich, famous, and exactly the kind of young literary star the 1920s worshipped. But success came with pressure — from editors, from readers, and from himself. Determined to prove that his talent wasn’t a fluke, he collected a group of previously published stories and shaped them into something emblematic of his generation.

Many of the tales in Flappers and Philosophers had already appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and Scribner’s Magazine — places where Fitzgerald’s fiction both paid the bills and defined a new kind of modern cool. The collection captures that golden moment when he was still the hopeful chronicler of his age… not yet its tragic prophet.

This debut collection contains eight short stories that each pull at the glittering seams of the American dream. In tales like The Ice Palace and Bernice Bobs Her Hair, Fitzgerald casts his eye on Southern identity, gender expectations, and the raw awkwardness of becoming. The Offshore Pirate toys with romance and rebellion, while Dalyrimple Goes Wrong cracks open the illusion of upward mobility. Each piece hums with sharp dialogue, youthful yearning, and the first hints of disillusionment.

While the stories vary in tone, they share a common thread: the ache of wanting more — more excitement, more beauty, more meaning — and the quiet recognition that the price of wanting is often innocence itself.