What is the title of F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel?

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel is The Beautiful and Damned. It followed This Side of Paradise, his hugely successful 1920 debut, and was published in book form by Charles Scribner’s Sons on March 4, 1922.

Set mainly among New York’s wealthy café society, the novel follows Anthony Patch, a would-be artist and heir, and Gloria Gilbert, a beautiful young woman whose marriage becomes consumed by partying, alcoholism, and financial decline. Fitzgerald drew partly on his own early marriage to Zelda Fitzgerald, although the book is a work of fiction rather than a direct memoir.

Fitzgerald began writing the novel in 1920 while living in Westport, Connecticut. Early working titles included The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy and The Flight of the Rocket. He revised the manuscript with advice from editor Max Perkins and critic Edmund Wilson, seeking a more controlled and realistic style than in This Side of Paradise.

A common mix-up is confusing Fitzgerald’s second novel with The Great Gatsby, which was his third. The Beautiful and Damned was serialized in Metropolitan magazine before its 1922 book publication.