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FITZGERALD, F. Scott (1896–1940). The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925. 8vo. Original publisher's green cloth lettered in blind, gilt–lettered spine (front hinge a bit tender, rear hinge slightly cracked, few pages with unobtrusive penciled marginalia, else fine); morocco–backed box gilt. FIRST EDITION, second printing, with “echolalia” on p. 60, “northern” for “southern” on p. 119, “sickantired” on p. 205, and “Union Street station” for “Union Station” on p. 211. Widely regarded as Fitzgerald’s masterpiece and is considered “one of the half–dozen best American novels… it remains a prose poem of delight and sadness which has by now introduced two generations to the romance of America…” (Connolly). PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY FITZGERALD on the front free endpaper: “With the Pleasant memories of La Paix behind me alas and alack! Souvenir of 1932–1933 for M.T. from her – at least from one who was almost made to feel like – a guest. F. Scott Fitzgerald.” The inscription is to Margaret Turnbull, who with her husband Bayard owned La Paix, a 28–acre estate with a large Victorian house near Towson, Maryland. The Fitzgeralds rented La Paix from the Turnbulls in 1932 and 1933 because of its proximity to the Phipps Clinic, the psychiatric branch of Johns Hopkins, where Zelda was being treated. This is also where Fitzgerald finished work on his second masterpiece, Tender is the Night. The Turnbulls lived nearby in another house on the estate; while Bayard Turnbull disapproved of Fitzgerald, his wife Martha shared an interest in literature with him and became a good friend of him. According to her son, at their first dinner together “Fitzgerald grew heated on the subject of Thomas Wolfe and left the table to get his copy of ‘Look Homeward, Angel’, which he insisted my mother take with her and read at once… Out of such treads their friendship was woven. Each time they met here was a carry–over from the previous meeting – something to discuss that seemed of vital importance… He was constantly lending my mother books: Proust, D.H. Lawrence, Hemingway, Rilke, the diary of Otto Braun… My mother became for a brief season a listener to and therefore a sharer of his thoughts” (Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, pp. 221–240). It was Margaret Turnbull who introduced Fitzgerald to T.S. Eliot when the poet was staying with her family while lecturing at Johns Hopkins on the Metaphysical Poets. Bruccoli A11.1.b; Connolly, The Modern Movement 48.