F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Final Unpublished Collection Set for Spring 2017 Release

In the years before his tumultuous 1937 Hollywood move, F. Scott Fitzgerald lived at North Carolina’s Grove Park Inn. His wife Zelda was receiving treatment at a nearby sanatorium. Tucked in the mountains, mired in alcoholism, and already careening towards his untimely death, the author wrote many of the stories set to appear in his final unpublished collection: I’d Die for You, due out from Scribner in April, 2017. Said to be a stylistic departure from his better known work, the publisher claims the collection will “provide new insight into the bold and uncompromising arc of Fitzgerald’s career.”

The title story draws from the author’s southern exile, heightening the events of a particularly traumatic interview with The New York Times, which was described by Thomas Wolfe as “a lousy trick, a rotten…piece of journalism.” In the fictionalized account, Fitzgerald is said to have added a full Hollywood film crew to the rural pine forests, foreshadowing his impending departure to the west.

Unlike The Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald’s most read posthumous release, I’d Die for You contains finished work presented as the author intended it to be read. He had, in fact, attempted to publish the collection during his lifetime; however, because of content Scribner describes as “controversial [for] depicting young men and women who actually spoke and thought more as young men and women did, without censorship,” it was considered unsellable. Refusing compromising edits, Fitzgerald left the stories unpublished, despite financial struggles and a need for critical attention.

This is not the first unreleased Fitzgerald material to crop up in recent years. Just last August, Strand Magazine published “Temperature,” a story found in his Princeton University archive that follows Emmet Monsen, a hard drinking writer with cardiac disease. For the time being though, it seems like these pieces are the last of their kind. If I’d Die for You actually ends up being the final word from The Great Gatsby author, the collection should be an interesting conclusion to an illustrious and tragic literary legacy.