Princeton University Library ©Author Adventures

F. Scott Fitzgerald at Princeton University

This page on author F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) will take you from Princeton down to the University of South Carolina to Alabama and westward to California. So, with this author, you can create your own cross-country trail!

A one-page biography of Fitzgerald, written by Matthew J. Bruccoli, a lifelong Fitzgerald scholar, is available here: https://sc.edu.

“My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

At the Princeton Library

According to a 2013 Princeton University Library press release, the autographed manuscript and galleys of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby are now digitized and available to view online, if you can not personally visit the Princeton Library. According to princeton.edu/news/2013/05/24: “The autograph manuscript and corrected galleys show Fitzgerald as an author at work, conceiving, crafting and reworking his novel in layers over a four-year period, from June 1922 — when Fitzgerald first began planning a third novel originally set in the Midwest around 1885 — until it was published in its present form by Charles Scribner’s Sons in April 1925.”

Fitzgerald was in Princeton’s Class of 1917. Because of that connection, his only daughter donated many of his original works to the Princeton Library. The collection is robust.

Princeton is known to be a college town with a population of approximately 30,000.

Beyond

Beyond New Jersey, an excellent way to learn about Fitzgerald is through the University of South Carolina website, thanks to his ultimate biographer, Dr. Matthew Bruccoli.

Together with his wife Arlyn, Dr. Matthew Bruccoli collected and donated many Fitzgerald items to the University of South Carolina Thomas Cooper Library.

Read more about places honoring F. Scott Fitzgerald through our Alabama, California, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Rhode Island web pages.

Princeton University is the third stop on our New Jersey Author Adventures Trail.

Patricia Smart