What is the title of Fitzgerald's unfinished novel published posthumously?

The story behind the answer

Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel published posthumously was The Last Tycoon.

Fitzgerald was working on the novel when he died in December 1940. It was published in 1941 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, with Fitzgerald’s friend and literary critic Edmund Wilson preparing the surviving manuscript, notes, and outlines for publication. The book follows Monroe Stahr, a powerful Hollywood studio executive modeled partly on producer Irving Thalberg.

The novel is set inside the American film industry, where creative ambition, money, romance, and corporate power collide. Fitzgerald had hoped it would restore his literary reputation and believed it might become his finest work, but he completed only part of the planned story.

Readers may encounter a second title, The Love of the Last Tycoon. That 1993 edition, edited by Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli, presented a reconstructed version based on the surviving material and Fitzgerald’s notes. The original posthumous publication, however, was titled The Last Tycoon, making the stored answer the standard answer to this question.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Aug. 2026

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