All the glamour and cynicismof the dawning Jazz Age are on display in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s debut story collection. Flappers and Philosophers was first published in 1920, on the heels of the young author’s smash hit novel This Side of Paradise. The collection contains some of his most famous early stories, including “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” “The Ice Palace,” “Head and Shoulders,” and “The Offshore Pirate.” In these pages we meet many of Fitzgerald’s trademark character types: the beautiful and headstrong young women and the dissolute young men of what came to be called the Lost Generation. With their bobbed hair and dangling cigarettes, his characters are sophisticated, witty, and, above all, modern: the spoiled heiress who falls for her kidnapper, the intellectual student whose life is turned upside-down by a chorus girl, the feuding debutantes whose weapons are cutting words and a pair of scissors.
