THE GREAT GATSBY: An Illuminated Edition

by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anna and Elena Balbusso (Illustrator), William Cain (Foreword by)

Overview

Fitzgerald's beloved account of the devastating costs of the American dream gets a fittingly gorgeous update in this high-end art-book edition, elaborately decorated by the famed Italian illustrators known at the Balbusso Twins.

Featuring more than fifty full color illustrations that combine jazz age decadence with a sleek, almost futuristic sensibility, this elegantly designed volume brings the roaring twenties straight into the 2020s.

Anna and Elena Balbusso are celebrated graphic artists with over 80 international awards to their name. They specialize in literary illustration, with several works for The Folio Society including their much-lauded take on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. They continue their string of stunning illustrated editions of literary classics with an American classic that remains potent and relevant for today's economic divide. Whether you're a fan of classic literature, a lover of beautiful illustration and design, or a collector of exceptionally gorgeous books, this edition will please the eye as much as Fitzgerald's story challenges the status quo.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948886284
Publisher:	Pace Products, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/23/2022
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	10.60(w) x 14.70(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered one of the pre-eminent authors in the history of American literature, due largely to the enormous posthumous success of his third book, The Great Gatsby. Perhaps the quintessential American novel, as well as a definitive social history of the Jazz Age, The Great Gatsby has become required reading for virtually every American high school student and has enchanted and awakened generation after generation of readers. In his latter years, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and became a scriptwriter, struggling with alcoholism and failure to fulfill his limitless promise. He died of a heart attack in 1940, at age 44, his fifth and final novel only half completed.

Italian twins Anna and Elena Balbusso are an award-winning art team. Together they have illustrated over forty books and garnered more than eighty international awards for art and design, including three Gold medals, a Silver medal and the Stevan Dohanos Award from the Society of Illustrators; two Joseph Morgan Henninger Awards; and the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustration Awards Best Book Prize. You can find more of their work at www.balbusso.com.


William Cain is the Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College specializing in nineteenth and early twentieth century American literature.

Date of Birth:

September 24, 1896

Date of Death:

December 21, 1940

Place of Birth:

St. Paul, Minnesota

Education:

Princeton University

Read an Excerpt

On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further… And one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.