What was the original working title of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender Is the Night?

F. Scott Fitzgerald originally worked on Tender Is the Night under the title The World’s Fair. He began developing the novel soon after The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, but the project changed substantially before reaching its final form.

The earliest version centered on Francis Melarky, a young Hollywood technician traveling on the French Riviera with his domineering mother. Fitzgerald wrote several drafts in 1925 and 1926 but could not complete that version. Other tentative titles included Our Type and The Boy Who Killed His Mother, reflecting the story’s shifting characters and darker themes.

Fitzgerald later transformed the project into the story of psychiatrist Dick Diver and his wife, Nicole, whose marriage deteriorates amid wealth, mental illness, and alcoholism. He drew on his own experiences with Zelda Fitzgerald, as well as the lives of expatriate friends Gerald and Sara Murphy.

The completed novel, retitled Tender Is the Night, was published in 1934. Its final title comes from John Keats’s poem Ode to a Nightingale. The novel’s long evolution explains why early material differs sharply from the finished book.