What Makes Gatsby Great

Join Peerless Rockville and Jackson R. Bryer, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland and co-founder and president of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society for this fascinating illustrated presentation in-person at Glenview Mansion.

When The Great Gatsby was published in May 1925, reviews were decidedly mixed and sales were well below what was expected. Many readers were disappointed that the author of This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922) had seemingly abandoned his portraits of young denizens of the Jazz Age and written an entirely different sort of novel. In the almost hundred years that have elapsed since, The Great Gatsby has come to be regarded as one of the greatest works of American literature; and its sales now are well over 250,000 copies annually. This talk will first explore Fitzgerald's intentions in writing his third novel and then examine it closely in an effort to account for both its popularity and its excellence as a literary work.

Peerless Rockville Historic Preservation Ltd. is supported in part by a grant from the City of Rockville and funding from the Montgomery County Government and the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County.

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