What was F. Scott Fitzgerald's first published novel?

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first published novel was This Side of Paradise.

Charles Scribner’s Sons published the novel on March 26, 1920, when Fitzgerald was 23. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is a Princeton student whose education, romances, ambitions, and disappointments reflect the changing values of young Americans after World War I. The book blends conventional narrative with letters, poetry, and other experimental forms.

The novel grew out of Fitzgerald’s earlier, unpublished manuscript The Romantic Egotist, which he began writing in 1917. After revisions, Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins accepted it. Its publication made Fitzgerald a national literary figure almost overnight and helped persuade Zelda Sayre to resume their engagement; they married in April 1920.

Readers sometimes confuse This Side of Paradise with The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald’s second novel, published in 1922, or The Great Gatsby, his third, published in 1925. Although Gatsby eventually became his most famous work, This Side of Paradise remains the book that launched his career and helped define his association with the Jazz Age.