The Great Gatsby Turns 100

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is considered the quintessential depiction of the Roaring Twenties and a definite contender for the title of great American novel. On the 100th anniversary of its publication, readers return to the classic, and writers imagine new stories for its characters.

Published on 10 April 1925, it was Fitzgerald's third novel. The first, This Side of Paradise (1920), had been a critical success. His second, The Beautiful and Damned (1922) was a commercial one. The Great Gatsby, despite enthusiastic reviews by such luminaries as Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway, sold badly. The author would have been astonished to learn that the novel he considered his finest has gone on to sell over 25 million copies.

In barely 200 pages, The Great Gatsby contains memorable characters and sharp symbolism. It captures a moment when the U.S.A. seemed to be trying to define itself. A period of prosperity that failed to hide the poverty of much of the population, as symbolised by the industrial wasteland Nick refers to as the "valley of ashes" the characters cross to reach the gleaming skyscrapers of NYC. The outward moral strictures of Prohibition that led to organised crime and continued alcohol use. The myth of the self-made man and the American dream embodied by a bootlegger.

The novel is set over the summer of 1922 in New York state and is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young banker, who observes the dynamics between the mysterious Jay Gatsby and a couple from well-established American families: Daisy and Tom Buchanan. Daisy is Carraway's cousin, which allows him access to their social world. The couple live in East Egg, surrounded by other people who make up the American elite of old, wealthy families.

Gatsby has set up home in a vast mansion across the bay in West Egg and, despite this being the era of Prohibition, throws vast, extravagant parties where alcohol flows. No one really knows who Gatsby is, or where his fortune comes from, although there are well-founded suspicions that he has got rich selling bootleg alcohol.

Gatsby has an unrequited love for Daisy Buchanan, who he met during World War I, and his pursuit of her will ultimately end in tragedy.

Becoming a Classic
Fitzgerald, who had enthusiastically pursued the pleasures of the Jazz Age, died of a heart attack at age 44 in 1940. He didn't live to see his novel distributed to 150,000 American servicemen during World War II as part of the Armed Services Editions. It went on to become a set text in schools and universities.

Later generations also discovered it through adaptations, such as the 1974 film by Jack Clayton, starring Robert Redford as Gatsby. Or Baz Luhrmann's extravagant 2013 version starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

As it reaches 100, the story is wowing audiences on Broadway and in London in a musical version.

The novel entered the public domain in 2021 and writers have seized the opportunity to write backstories for the characters or retell the events from a different angle.

Michael Farris Smith imagined the narrator's back story in Nick. Fitzgerald is not famed for his well-rounded female characters. Instead they tend to be viewed purely through a male gaze. So Jane Crowther re-imagined the story with the Jay Gatsby as a woman and Danny Buchanan as a man in Gatsby. In The Gatsby Gambit, meanwhile, Claire Anderson-Wheeler revisited the story as a detective mystery told by Jay Gatsby's invented sister, Greta Gatsby.

But if you want to discover or revisit Fitzgerald's original prose, check out these readings of the novel created by the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. They asked prominent contemporary authors such as Jonathan Franzen and Ann Beattie to read or share reading each chapter.