One edition is instead dedicated to individuals that only its publisher would recognise: “Dedicated to Logan and Olivia Barbrook/ May your lives be filled with wonderful stories, great adventures and happily-ever-afters, Love Mummy.” She was partly the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan.”
To his dismay, 17 editions dropped Fitzgerald’s dedication to his wife, Zelda: “Her name has been erased – a serious problem … because she was Fitzgerald’s muse. While it was still in copyright, Scribner’s sold about half a million copies a year, which is remarkable for a backlist title.” He pored over 34 new print editions released in the past year, from established and independent publishers and some that list neither the place nor publisher, although there are further digital ones: “Six are competently done, but the rest are rather careless, done just to pick up a slice of the yearly sales.
In his study, to be published next month in the F Scott Fitzgerald Review, West contrasts the focus on accuracy of Fitzgerald’s publisher, Scribner, with today’s “textual instability incarnate”. It’s a delicate work of literature and you hate to see it treated so roughly.” He said that Fitzgerald would have been “appalled” by inferior editions: “The composition of The Great Gatsby was his finest hour. William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath are among classics that will follow soon.Īlarm over the poor-quality editions of The Great Gatsby has inspired a study by James West, general editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F Scott Fitzgerald and emeritus professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. It entered the public domain on 1 January 2021, after 95 years of copyright protection.Įrnest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, his 1926 novel about disillusioned expatriates in postwar France and Spain, came out of copyright protection last month.
The Great Gatsby of 1925 is the quintessential novel of the hedonistic jazz age, the story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Experts are warning that the freedom for anyone to reproduce or reimagine books once they are out of copyright is corrupting classic texts – all for the sake of making a quick buck.
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