His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Here we offer the finest facsimile of the first edition, first printing, of the classic American novel, perhaps the greatest novel ever, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, originally published in 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, and here recreated by First Edition Library. The book comes wrapped in the highest quality facsimile of the first edition dust jacket you can only get here, digitally remastered and printed on coated heavyweight bond. The polymer coating on the paper ensures the brightest colors and sharpest prints, as the ink sits atop the paper rather than being absorbed into the fibers. The book also comes with its original publisher's notes on the facsimile issue and a charming ungummed copy of a fantasy Fitzgerald bookplate humorist Herb Roth designed for "The New Yorker" in 1925. Fitzgerald was so pleased by the cartoon's double-edged image of festivity and fatality that he included a personal clipping of it as a preface to his Gatsby papers at Princeton.

Edited by Maxwell Perkins, every page, every line, every word of this rich, sublime novel is carefully chosen for a very important reason. And yet, its immense import was not felt until the Army distributed copies of the book to soldiers in WWII, just after Fitzgerald's death. In 1940, as hundreds of cases of the unsold second edition of Gatsby languish in Scribners' warehouse, Fitzgerald, fearing his physical decline, writes Max Perkins, referring to Scottie Fitzgerald, his teenaged daughter: “I wish I was in print. It will be odd a year or so from now when Scottie assures her friends I was an author and finds that no book is procurable… Professionally, I know, the next move must come from me. Would the 25-cent press keep Gatsby in the public eye—or is the book unpopular. Has it had its chance? Would a popular reissue in that series with a preface not by me but by one of its admirers – I can maybe pick one – make it a favorite with classrooms, profs, lovers of English prose – anybody. But to die, so completely and unjustly after having given so much. Even now, there is little published in American fiction that doesn’t slightly bare my stamp—in a small way I was an original.”


This wonderful facsimile edition is in excellent, perhaps unread condition with some slight wear to the boards (please see pics). Binding is very tight and square; text is very clean, bright, and crisp. 218 pages. The book measures approximately 7 3/4 x 5.5-inches. Dust jacket comes sleeved in ph-neutral Mylar and ready to slip into your collection.


This iconic first edition facsimile will make a wonderful addition to your collection or a very thoughtful gift.


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