The Smart Set published F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first professional short story, “Babes in the Woods.” The story appeared in the magazine in September 1919, marking his first appearance in a paying literary publication.
Fitzgerald had written an earlier version of the story while a student at Princeton, where it appeared in the Nassau Literary Magazine in 1917. The Smart Set publication transformed that student work into a professional credit and helped launch his writing career.
The magazine was an influential American literary monthly associated with editors H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. It gave emerging writers a prestigious outlet, even though it paid far less than mass-circulation magazines. Fitzgerald’s first Smart Set story reportedly earned him $30.
Readers sometimes confuse this milestone with “Head and Shoulders,” his first story in the mass-market Saturday Evening Post, published in 1920. The distinction matters: The Smart Set was his first paying literary magazine, while the Post brought him a much larger commercial audience.