Flappers and Philosophers

Published soon after Fitzgerald's debut novel This Side of Paradise, Flappers and Philosophers was the author's first collection of short fiction, a form through which he had gained notoriety in newspapers and magazines. The familiar themes of aspiration and social satire already permeate his writing: in Bernice Bobs Her Hair the fashionable Marjorie attempts to turn her dowdy cousin into a debutante, before betraying her out of jealousy, while The Ice Palace features a Southern belle whose marriage to a Northerner finds her confronted with a cultural clash between tradition and modernity. Also containing The Offshore Pirate, Head and Shoulders, The Cut-Glass Bowl, Benediction, Dalyrimple Goes Wrong and The Four Fists, this volume of stories illustrates the early stages of Fitzgerald's development as a writer and provides an entertaining chronicle of America in the 1910s.