The Romantic Egoists

A most intriguing perspective on a legendary literary couple

This pictorial autobiography of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald documents two lives that have become legendary. The Romantic Egoists draws almost entirely from the scrapbooks and photograph albums that the Fitzgeralds scrupulously kept as their personal record and provides a wealth of illustrative material not previously available.

In a unique way this book gives Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's own story. The variety is surprising: Fitzgerald's thoughts about his early loves in St. Paul, Minnesota; a photograph of the country club in Montgomery, Alabama, where the two met; reviews of This Side of Paradise; poems to the couple from Ring Lardner; snapshots of their trips abroad; Fitzgerald's careful accounting of his earnings; a photograph of the house on Long Island where The Great Gatsby was conceived; postcards with Fitzgerald's drawings for his daughter. These rare photos and memorabilia combine into a narrative augmented by selections from Scott's and Zelda's own writings, conveying the spirit of particular moments in their lives. As Scottie Fitzgerald Smith writes in her introduction, "We've tried hard to balance the literary with the personal, and the familiar with the more obscure . . . to make it their book, rather than a book about them."