THE GREAT GATSBY
London: Chatto & Windus, 1926. First U.K. Edition. The first English edition of Fitzgerald's third novel and most enduring work, the story of a flamboyant racketeer's attempt to recapture the upper-class girl he fell in love with during the waning years of World War I. While hailed for many decades as an American classic, Gatsby was a commercial disappointment during its time; its two printings totaled 23,870 copies, and at the time of Fitzgerald's death in 1940, stacks of them still remained unsold in the Scribner's warehouse.
The UK edition of Gatsby was published from the American plates of the second Scribner's edition, which incorporated corrections to the six textual errors in the first state of the text. Fitzgerald, eager for a better literary reputation in England than he ever enjoyed, was disappointed when his primary publisher, William Collins, turned down the opportunity to publish Gatsby, stating that to published the novel "would be to reduce the number of his readers rather than to increase them." Chatto & Windus would publish the novel in a print run a fraction of the size of the Scribner's edition. In his introduction to New Essays on The Great Gatsby, Matthew Bruccoli notes that "The English impact was negligible. The 1926 Chatto & Windus printing did not sell well, although reviews were better than those Fitzgerald's previous novels had received in England. The Times Literary Supplement called it "undoubtedly a work of art and of great promise"; Edward Shanks in the London Mercury commended the author's control over his material. Conrad Aiken, writing in The New Criterion, praised the form and originality of the novel but stated that it is not "great," "large," or "strikingly subtle"" (pp.3-4).
Considerably scarcer than its American counterpart, with no jacketed examples found in the auction record, and OCLC noting a scant 20 holdings (of these, only 13 in U.S. institutions). Bruccoli A11.1.c.; Sutherland & Connell. The Connell Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (2010), p.64; Connolly 48. Item #4983
First Impression (from American plates), one of 3,000 copies. Octavo (19.25cm); primary binding in dark blue V cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; dustjacket; [vi],218pp. Hint of a forward lean, gentle sunning to spine, with some scattered foxing to text edges, preliminary, and terminal leaves; hinges sound; Very Good+. In the Francis Cugat dustjacket, the second issue, with the original 7s. price clipped by the publisher, and the shadow of the new price sticker directly above; gently spine-sunned, lightly edgeworn, with some rubbing to spine ends, joints, and flap folds; minute loss to upper corner-tips, a few tiny tears, with shallow loss to crown, affecting the "T" in "The;" small area of loss skillfully and professionally restored at upper front panel (2 5/8" by 3/4", affecting parts of "The" and the "Gr" in the title); Very Good+. Housed in a custom half-morocco clamshell case.
Price: $125,000.00