Download or read book The Beautiful and the Damned (Special Edition) written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-07-07 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Beautiful and Damned tells the story of Anthony Patch, a 1910s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune, and his courtship and relationship with his wife Gloria Gilbert. It describes his brief service in the Army during World War I, and the couple's post-war partying life in New York, and his later alcoholism. Gloria and Anthony's love story is much more than just a couple falling in love. Their story deals with the hardships of a relationship, especially when each character has a tendency to be selfish. The way Gloria and Anthony are portrayed seems to draw on Fitzgerald's personal life with his wife. Zelda was a firecracker of a woman, and Scott was quite the party guy himself. As Joanna Stolarek suggests, Fitzgerald draws on "Zelda, the object of the writer's literary passion" (Stolarek et al 53). Considering that Fitzgerald uses his life with Zelda as a template for this novel, The Beautiful and Damned can be very telling of his personal life.