The Great Gatsby: A Timeless Tale of Love, Loss, and Longing

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis
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F. Scott Fitzgerald guessed that The Great Gatsby would sell about 80,000 copies, then added that he might be wrong. He was, by a wide margin. Scribner’s first printing was 20,870 copies at $2.00 each, and that run took until June 1926 to sell out. In the month before Fitzgerald died in 1940, seven copies sold, and his royalties for the year came to $13.13 (Library of Congress).

The same book now sells roughly half a million copies a year, and its lifetime total is past 30 million by the Library of Congress’s count. It is short and its plot is simple, which is part of why the arguments about it never settle.

Fitzgerald, Perkins and a Two-Dollar First Edition

Fitzgerald (1896–1940) wrote a rough draft in 1924 after moving to the French Riviera. He sent a near-final manuscript to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, on October 27 of that year, rewrote through the winter in Rome, and delivered the finished text in February 1925 (Wikipedia). The title took longer to settle than most of the prose. Rejected candidates included Trimalchio in West Egg, Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires and The High-Bouncing Lover, and Perkins thought the first of those too obscure for readers.

Charles Scribner’s Sons published the book on April 10, 1925. The contract paid Fitzgerald a $5,000 advance against a 15 percent royalty on the first 20,000 copies, so nearly the whole first printing had to sell before he earned another dollar. It didn’t. Reviews were divided, and by October 1925 sales were still under 20,000 copies. Unsold stock from a second printing sat in a Scribner’s warehouse for about two decades (Library of Congress).

The rescue came from an unlikely direction. The Armed Services Editions program put more than 122 million paperbacks into the hands of American troops between 1943 and 1947. Gatsby was one of 1,324 titles, and 155,000 copies went out in 1945 alone. Veterans carried it home, and Scribner’s printed new editions. Fitzgerald never saw any of it; near the end of his life he wrote to Perkins that he wished he were still in print.

US copyright on the novel expired on January 1, 2021, when works published in 1925 entered the public domain (Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain). Project Gutenberg posted the full text later that month, and in April 2025 the Library of Congress marked the novel’s hundredth anniversary with a piece on its bruising debut.

The Story Itself

The setting is Long Island and New York City in 1922, during Prohibition. Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner, Yale graduate, First World War veteran and bond salesman, rents a bungalow in West Egg next to the mansion of Jay Gatsby, a millionaire whose parties draw crowds and whose past nobody can pin down. Across the bay in East Egg live Tom Buchanan and his wife, Daisy. Gatsby’s real project is getting her back.

Everything after that is consequence. A reunion, an affair, Tom’s exposure of how Gatsby made his money, and a fatal car accident carry the book toward an ending that Nick reports after leaving the East for the Midwest, worn out by its decadence (Wikipedia).

A Narrator Who Wants to Believe

Nick opens by recalling his father’s advice: before criticizing anyone, remember that “all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” (Chapter I, Project Gutenberg text). It is a gentle rule, and it shapes every page that follows. A narrator who holds back judgment is handy in a story about people who badly need judging. One reviewer on Triumph of the Now argues that Nick’s account of Gatsby can’t be fully trusted for exactly that reason, since Nick wants the romantic version to be true (Scott Manley Hadley, 2015).

A long wooden dock on Long Island Sound at dusk with a single green lantern glowing at the far end

That reading changes how the book’s admiration for Gatsby lands. The man in the plot is a bootlegger who has organized a fortune around one woman. The man in Nick’s telling is something close to a hero. The gap between the two is where much of the irony lives.

The Green Light and the Past

The novel’s central image is small: a light at the end of a dock across the bay. Fitzgerald turns it into an argument in the closing pages.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Chapter IX

The sentence points at the future while everything Gatsby does is aimed at repairing the past, and the book’s last line makes the same turn on a larger scale.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, final line

One analysis of that line points to the hard b sounds stacked in “beat,” “boats,” “borne” and “back,” and to the word “we,” which makes the struggle everyone’s rather than Gatsby’s alone (TCK Publishing). Whether the novel condemns the American Dream or only warns about its price is still argued. The text supports both readings.

Money Without Consequences

Tom and Daisy Buchanan are Fitzgerald’s account of money that never has to pay for anything, and he is not generous to them. Daisy’s remark about her infant daughter in the first chapter sets the tone: she hopes the girl will be a fool, because that is “the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Chapter I). Delivered as a throwaway, it works as a confession of how Daisy has managed to get by.

The Triumph of the Now reviewer reads the Buchanans as a couple whose privilege shields them from the damage they do to everyone around them (review). It is the book’s bleakest observation, and Fitzgerald makes it without a single villain’s speech.

What Critics Said in 1925, and Since

Reviews in 1925 were mixed. Some critics praised the prose and its picture of American wealth and ambition. Others dismissed the book as unimportant and artificial and ranked it well below Fitzgerald’s earlier novels (Library of Congress). The Herald Tribune called it “a literary lemon meringue” (Wikipedia).

An empty Jazz Age ballroom at dawn with champagne coupes and confetti left on the floor

The private mail ran warmer. Willa Cather, Edith Wharton and T. S. Eliot all wrote admiring letters. Eliot’s, sent on Faber and Gwyer letterhead on December 31, 1925, called the novel “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James” (text of the letter).

Skeptics today tend to repeat the old complaints: a thin plot, flat characters, little emotional range. A recent post on Miller’s Book Review, “Questioning the Greatness of ‘Gatsby,'” takes those objections seriously and still comes down for the book, arguing that its sparseness leaves room for readers to bring their own experience to it. Its verdict: “Gatsby earns its praise” (post). A fair objection from the other side is that the novel’s women are sketched mostly through the men who want them, and that the book’s coolness keeps some readers at arm’s length.

The Cover Everybody Recognizes

Scribner’s commissioned the jacket before Fitzgerald had finished the manuscript. The illustrator, Francis Cugat, was paid $100 (Princeton University Library). His gouache, titled “Celestial Eyes,” shows a woman’s face hanging over a carnival scene, and Princeton owns the original, donated by Charles Scribner III. Fitzgerald asked Perkins to hold the jacket for him and later claimed he had “written it into the book” (Smithsonian Magazine).

What the eyes mean is unsettled. They are generally read as the billboard eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg in the novel, though Smithsonian Magazine calls that unproven, and Scribner III has suggested the image may instead be Nick’s vision of Daisy’s floating face.

From a Lost Silent Film to Broadway

Adaptation started almost immediately. Owen Davis’s stage version opened at the Ambassador Theatre in New York on February 2, 1926, and ran 112 performances. A silent film directed by Herbert Brenon followed that year, with Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson and William Powell, and it is now a lost film (Wikipedia).

Jack Clayton’s 1974 version, written by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, won Oscars for costume design and for adapted music. Reviewers admired its fidelity and polish and faulted its chill; Vincent Canby of the New York Times likened it to a body left too long at the bottom of a swimming pool. It still grossed about $26.5 million on a $7 million budget (Wikipedia).

Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan, reached US theaters on May 10 and opened the Cannes Film Festival five days later. It grossed $353.6 million worldwide, and Catherine Martin won Oscars for both production design and costume design. The songs were executive-produced by Jay-Z and The Bullitts. Critics split: Wikipedia’s tally shows 49 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 55 out of 100 on Metacritic, with praise for the visual style and DiCaprio and complaints that spectacle crowded out the book’s emotional core (Wikipedia). Warner Bros.’ first trailer:

The stage keeps returning to it. John Harbison’s opera premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on December 20, 1999, and in 2010 the Off-Broadway company Elevator Repair Service staged the entire text as Gatz (Wikipedia). A musical with music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Nathan Tysen and a book by Kait Kerrigan opened at the Broadway Theatre on April 25, 2024, starring Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada, and won the Tony for best costume design in a musical (Wikipedia). When the copyright lapsed, a prequel novel, Michael Farris Smith’s Nick, was already scheduled to appear on January 5, 2021 (Duke).

Frequently Asked Questions

When was The Great Gatsby published?
April 10, 1925, by Charles Scribner’s Sons in New York.

A 1920s writer's desk with a vintage typewriter, an open paperback, a fountain pen and a glass of amber liquid

Who narrates the novel?
Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner and bond salesman who rents the house next to Gatsby’s. Some readers question how far his account can be trusted.

Why did the book sell so badly at first?
Reviews were divided, and some critics judged it far below Fitzgerald’s earlier work. The first printing of 20,870 copies took until June 1926 to sell out.

Is The Great Gatsby free to read online?
In the United States, yes. Its copyright expired on January 1, 2021, and the full text is on Project Gutenberg.

Which film is the most faithful to the book?
Critics praised the 1974 film for its fidelity but found it cold. The 2013 film is far more stylized and drew mixed reviews, though its visuals and DiCaprio’s performance were widely admired.

Where to Read It

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a short novel, and since the text has been in the US public domain since 2021, editions differ mainly in their introductions, notes and design. See it on Amazon (affiliate link)

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. A commission may be earned if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you.

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