The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Patricia Hampl, Edited by Dave Page

Minnesota Historical Society Press (September 24, 2004)

Fitzgerald’s sensitivity about wealth and position — later made evident in such classics as The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night — was bred of his St. Paul family and associations.

Description

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s St. Paul is a city of winter dreams and ice palaces, lakeside parties and neighborhood hijinks. These are stories of ambition and young love, insecurity and awkwardness, where a poor boy with energy and intelligence can break into the upper classes and become a glittering success.

This selection brings together the best of Fitzgerald’s St. Paul stories—some virtually unknown, others classics of short fiction. Patricia Hampl’s incisive introduction traces the trajectory of Fitzgerald’s blazing celebrity and its connections to his life in the city that gave him his best material. Headnotes by Dave Page provide specific ties between the stories and Fitzgerald’s life in St. Paul.

Author information

For his keen social insight, glib sophistication, and breathtaking lyricism, F. Scott Fitzgerald stands as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century. His biographers all note the importance of his boyhood in St. Paul, where, as he put it, he lived in “a house below the average on a street above the average.”

Patricia Hampl is Regents’ Professor of English at the University of Minnesota and author of several books, including A Romantic Education. She has won NEA, Bush, Guggenheim, Bellagio, McKnight, Fulbright, and MacArthur fellowships.

Dave Page is co-author of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Minnesota: Toward the Summit.

Related resources

MNopedia article on F. Scott Fitzgerald

Gale Family Library at the Minnesota History Center Libguide on F. Scott Fitzgerald

MNHS Minnesota Author Biography on F. Scott Fitzgerald

Minnesota History article, "F. Scott Fitzgerald's St. Paul: A Writer's Use of Material" by Patricia Kane

F. Scott Fitzgerald Collection at MNHS

• 352 pages
• 6 x 9 inches
• ISBN: 9780873515122