F. Scott Fitzgerald Creates a List of 22 Essential Books (1936)

In 1936 — per­haps the dark­est year of his life — F. Scott Fitzger­ald was con­va­lesc­ing in a hotel in Asheville, North Car­oli­na, when he offered his nurse a list of 22 books he thought were essen­tial read­ing. The list, above, is writ­ten in the nurse’s hand.

Fitzger­ald had moved into Asheville’s Grove Park Inn that April after trans­fer­ring his wife Zel­da, a psy­chi­atric patient, to near­by High­land Hos­pi­tal. It was the same month that Esquire pub­lished his essay “The Crack Up”, in which he con­fessed to a grow­ing aware­ness that “my life had been a draw­ing on resources that I did not pos­sess, that I had been mort­gag­ing myself phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly up to the hilt.”

Fitzger­ald’s finan­cial and drink­ing prob­lems had reached a crit­i­cal stage. That sum­mer he frac­tured his shoul­der while div­ing into the hotel swim­ming pool, and some­time lat­er, accord­ing to Michael Cody at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na’s Fitzger­ald Web site, “he fired a revolver in a sui­cide threat, after which the hotel refused to let him stay with­out a nurse. He was attend­ed there­after by Dorothy Richard­son, whose chief duties were to pro­vide him com­pa­ny and try to keep him from drink­ing too much. In typ­i­cal Fitzger­ald fash­ion, he devel­oped a friend­ship with Miss Richard­son and attempt­ed to edu­cate her by pro­vid­ing her with a read­ing list.”

It’s a curi­ous list. Shake­speare is omit­ted. So is James Joyce. But Nor­man Dou­glas and Arnold Ben­nett make the cut. Fitzger­ald appears to have restrict­ed his selec­tions to books that were avail­able at that time in Mod­ern Library edi­tions. At the top of the page, Richard­son writes “These are books that Scott thought should be required read­ing.”

• Sis­ter Car­rie, by Theodore Dreis­er
• The Life of Jesus, by Ernest Renan
• A Dol­l’s House, by Hen­rik Ibsen
• Wines­burg, Ohio, by Sher­wood Ander­son
• The Old Wives’ Tale, by Arnold Ben­nett
• The Mal­tese Fal­con, by Dashiel Ham­mett
• The Red and the Black, by Stend­hal
• The Short Sto­ries of Guy De Mau­pas­sant, trans­lat­ed by Michael Mon­a­han
• An Out­line of Abnor­mal Psy­chol­o­gy, edit­ed by Gard­ner Mur­phy
• The Sto­ries of Anton Chekhov, edit­ed by Robert N. Lin­scott
• The Best Amer­i­can Humor­ous Short Sto­ries, edit­ed by Alexan­der Jes­sup
• Vic­to­ry, by Joseph Con­rad
• The Revolt of the Angels, by Ana­tole France
• The Plays of Oscar Wilde
• Sanc­tu­ary, by William Faulkn­er
• With­in a Bud­ding Grove, by Mar­cel Proust
• The Guer­mantes Way, by Mar­cel Proust
• Swan­n’s Way, by Mar­cel Proust
• South Wind, by Nor­man Dou­glas
• The Gar­den Par­ty, by Kather­ine Mans­field
• War and Peace, by Leo Tol­stoy
• John Keats and Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley: Com­plete Poet­i­cal Works

via The Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s