The versions of the stories printed here are the last surviving ones on which it can be determined Fitzgerald worked. I have incorporated his handwritten changes to typescripts or manuscripts, placing in brackets phrases and passages lined through in uncompleted revisions. For example, the copy of “Offside Play” supplied to me by the Trustees of the Fitzgerald Estate predated one in the Fitzgerald Papers at Princeton. The texts were identical, but the Princeton copy bore Fitzgerald’s revisions in pencil, including the instruction on the first page: “Change to Princeton” (indicating that he wanted the location of this story to be changed from Yale to Princeton). The change was never made in the text of the story itself, but his intention should be known. Likewise, I have followed his stated preferences in cases where variant versions of a story survive. For example, Fitzgerald agreed to cut “The Women in the House” into a far shorter story called “Temperature,” but did not like the result and insisted in his letters that the longer original be offered for publication. Based on this, I have reproduced “The Women in the House” in its June 1939 version here. Where there is evidence of a substantially different version of a story having been drafted that does not now survive, such as the two pages from “Salute to Lucy and Elsie” focusing on the girls and their families, I have noted this.
“Day Off from Love,” while unfinished, is a section of a short story that reveals a moment of Fitzgerald’s creative process. Many examples of what Fitzgerald called “false starts” and what are obviously drafts of incomplete stories survive. Some run to twelve or fifteen pages before they fade out or stop abruptly. Others are as short as a paragraph or two. No other incomplete or fragmentary efforts are included. On some of these manuscripts or typescripts, Fitzgerald has marked his intention to save individual lines. One of these starts, titled “Ballet School—Chicago,” was identified in 2015 as the beginning of a novel; it is not, being instead an abandoned story. Fitzgerald wrote ideas in several paragraphs or pages for Pat Hobby stories, and for many movie scenarios, to which he never returned. Three stories that Fitzgerald is known to have completed have since disappeared: “Recklessness” (1922), “Daddy Was Perfect” (1934), and “They Never Grow Older” (1937) are discussed in his correspondence but have not, so far, been found.
Almost a hundred years have passed from the composition of the earliest of these stories until today. As many things mentioned in these stories are unfamiliar to readers now, the annotations are designed to situate the reader, explain what Fitzgerald meant, and, where relevant, add details about his connection to a particular event or situation or person. In the headnotes, I have drawn upon Fitzgerald’s correspondence to outline a story’s compositional history. The typists working on these stories were various and their styles not consistent. In some cases, I worked from carbon copies upon which commas and periods are indistinguishable. Rather than creating a diplomatic transcription, I have standardized punctuation for the sake of the contemporary reader. I retain Fitzgerald’s frequent use of the em dash—a trait he shares with Modern writers he admired, such as James Joyce. Where he underlines for emphasis or to indicate a quotation, or sets off a book title in quotation marks, I have italicized, as was the case in the final typeset publication of his writings. In my headnotes to each story, I have tried not to reveal crucial plot details. However, to avoid any spoilers, please read the stories themselves first.
AMD