GATSBY'S OXFORD

Sub-titled 'Scott, Zelda, and The Jazz Age Invasion of Britain: 1904-1929' this extraordinary history shows how the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald's creation of Jay Gatsby, war hero and Oxford man at the beginning of the Jazz Age attracted an astounding array of authors and intellectuals. The poet T. S. Eliot, the polo star Tommy Hitchcock, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were a diverse group of Americans who came to the City of Dreaming Spires when the Rhodes Scholar programme had just begun and World War One had enveloped much of Europe. Fitzgerald created the character Jay Gatsby shortly after his and Zelda's visit to Oxford, and the creation is a cultural reflection of the aspirations of many Americans who came to the University of Oxford seeking beauty, wisdom and social connections. Beginning in 1904, the story chronicles the experiences of American expatriates through Prohibition and the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, interpreted through the pages of the classic novel The Great Gatsby. It shows how much Fitzgerald owes a debt to the medieval, romantic and European historical tradition and what he would have experienced at the post-war university encountering an impressive array of artists including W. B Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. An interesting mix of intellectual, cultural, biographical and emotional history populated with transformative Great Thinkers. With maps on endpapers of the City of Oxford, 346pp, a glossary of Oxford terms like Battels (expenses incurred), Punt and Torpids (boat race for novice crews). US first edition.