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Love in the Night and The Swimmers
Jazz-Age Chronicles of Americans Abroad
Chronicling the golden era of the American moneyed classes, these two short stories bring alive the decadence and vitality of the Jazz Age. Witty and elegant, they prepared the ground for his masterpiece, Tender is the Night and eloquently demonstrate that, as a storyteller, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a natural.
Chronicling the golden era of the American moneyed classes, these two short stories bring alive the decadence and vitality of the Jazz Age. Witty and elegant, they prepared the ground for his masterpiece, Tender is the Night and eloquently demonstrate that, as a storyteller, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a natural.
60 pages, Paperback
First published March 14, 1925
8 people are currently reading
1733 people want to read
About the author
F. Scott Fitzgerald
2,343 books25.6k followersFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald, widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.
Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade.
His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further into the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death. After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. In 1993, a new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 27, 2023
“I am going to make love to you - and you are going to be glad.” What was blud waffling about ⁉️😭😭
December 2, 2024
A Section from the Library of America. I love getting their weekly emails with links to older short stories. And I like pretty much everything from F. Scott Fitzgerald.
September 25, 2014
Although I average a book a week and I’m in my fifties, somehow I’ve only just discovered F Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories. I did a clean out of my books in the garage recently and this is when I found Love in the Night, a little book with a marvellous cover published by Phoenix (jumping on the bandwagon I’m guessing of the Penguin 60s). And now I’m in love with his stories!
The book is only 58 pages and contains two of Fitzgerald’s stories - Love in the Night and The Swimmers. Love in the Night is a gem, very magical with its setting of the French Riviera.
“As he strolled along the seaside promenade at nine o’clock, when the stars were bright enough to compete with the bright lamps, he was aware of love on every side. From the open-air cafes, vivid with dresses just down from Paris, came a sweet pungent odour of flowers and chartreuse and fresh black coffee and cigarettes - and mingled with them all he caught another scent, the mysterious thrilling sent of love. Hands touched jewel-sparkling hands upon the white tables. Gay dresses and white shirt fronts swayed together, and matches were held, trembling a little, for slow-lighting cigarettes.”
I don’t know about you but I am there in the French Riviera of the 1920s! Val is a bored young Russian. His family are holidaying on the riviera and have gone to a party on a yacht moored in the Cannes harbour. He is running late and is to come later only he can’t find the right yacht. He finds love instead on the wrong yacht.
In The Swimmers Henry Marston is an American living in Paris with two children and a Parisian wife. He’s happy or at least he thinks he is until he comes home one day to find his wife with another man. Henry collapses and is unable to work for months. He is sent to the seaside at St Jean de Luz and that is where he meets the swimmer.
In the New York Times 31 March 1935 Edith H. Walton writes of Fitzgerald’s short story collection Taps at Reveille (the last published in his lifetime):
“It has become a dreadful commonplace to say that Mr. Fitzgerald’s material is rarely worthy of his talents. Unfortunately, however, the platitude represents truth. Scott Fitzgerald’s mastery of style - swift, sure, polished, firm is so complete that even his most trivial efforts are dignified by his technical competence. All his writing has a glamourous gloss upon it; it is always entertaining; it is always beautifully executed.
“Only when one seeks to discover what he has really said, what his stories really amount to, is one conscious of a certain emptiness. “Taps at Reveille will bore no one, and offend no trained intelligence, but when one remembers how fine a writer Mr Fitzgerald could still be, it simply is not good enough.”
Well, that’s a bit harsh! I have two answers for Ms Walton. 1. I will say that I am looking forward to reading his short stories, which, nearly 90 years later are not only “beautifully executed” but are now more valuable than ever because they recapture for us a time now completely lost.
2. After his death it was written of him: “Fitzgerald was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a generation.” Reading these stories it is not difficult to see why.
The book is only 58 pages and contains two of Fitzgerald’s stories - Love in the Night and The Swimmers. Love in the Night is a gem, very magical with its setting of the French Riviera.
“As he strolled along the seaside promenade at nine o’clock, when the stars were bright enough to compete with the bright lamps, he was aware of love on every side. From the open-air cafes, vivid with dresses just down from Paris, came a sweet pungent odour of flowers and chartreuse and fresh black coffee and cigarettes - and mingled with them all he caught another scent, the mysterious thrilling sent of love. Hands touched jewel-sparkling hands upon the white tables. Gay dresses and white shirt fronts swayed together, and matches were held, trembling a little, for slow-lighting cigarettes.”
I don’t know about you but I am there in the French Riviera of the 1920s! Val is a bored young Russian. His family are holidaying on the riviera and have gone to a party on a yacht moored in the Cannes harbour. He is running late and is to come later only he can’t find the right yacht. He finds love instead on the wrong yacht.
In The Swimmers Henry Marston is an American living in Paris with two children and a Parisian wife. He’s happy or at least he thinks he is until he comes home one day to find his wife with another man. Henry collapses and is unable to work for months. He is sent to the seaside at St Jean de Luz and that is where he meets the swimmer.
In the New York Times 31 March 1935 Edith H. Walton writes of Fitzgerald’s short story collection Taps at Reveille (the last published in his lifetime):
“It has become a dreadful commonplace to say that Mr. Fitzgerald’s material is rarely worthy of his talents. Unfortunately, however, the platitude represents truth. Scott Fitzgerald’s mastery of style - swift, sure, polished, firm is so complete that even his most trivial efforts are dignified by his technical competence. All his writing has a glamourous gloss upon it; it is always entertaining; it is always beautifully executed.
“Only when one seeks to discover what he has really said, what his stories really amount to, is one conscious of a certain emptiness. “Taps at Reveille will bore no one, and offend no trained intelligence, but when one remembers how fine a writer Mr Fitzgerald could still be, it simply is not good enough.”
Well, that’s a bit harsh! I have two answers for Ms Walton. 1. I will say that I am looking forward to reading his short stories, which, nearly 90 years later are not only “beautifully executed” but are now more valuable than ever because they recapture for us a time now completely lost.
2. After his death it was written of him: “Fitzgerald was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a generation.” Reading these stories it is not difficult to see why.
April 2, 2023
Love in the Night was a sweet and very captivating short story but I wasn't interested in The Swimmers at all.
January 28, 2024
[1.5]
i think this is fitzgerald worst short story.... but i'll give it 1.5 since we have a prince who becomes working class
i think this is fitzgerald worst short story.... but i'll give it 1.5 since we have a prince who becomes working class
June 30, 2019
Lovely mini-collection. 'Love in the Night' framed by a twee plot but lavish with beautiful description and romantic sensibilities. Similarly poignant, 'The Swimmers' is more complex in structure. Shifting locales, sometimes inadequately signposted, match the themes and journey, as do the included anecdotes and incidental beats. Well rounded characters, and some big statements in only a few lines. A great guide for how short stories ought to work.
February 15, 2022
I'm giving this full stars just for the vibes alone! I simply loved and got envy of the setting. These aristocratic parties in the privateer boat with music and the night where these two rich young 17 year teenagers find love and later follows the downfall of the young man spending his 8 years in poverty but the ending is so sweet and heart warming❤️so far all my F.S Fitzgerald books are success!
April 30, 2024
A beautiful ending despite the sad afterfeel, but it felt as though we were robbed of so much potential. The chemistry between the main characters was so good, though they didn't get much time together. Extra points for the created atmosphere - reading it at night was a vibe.
October 1, 2023
2.5 ⭐️ Sweet story. Wanted to give this short story a try since I loved The Great Gatsby so much. I didn’t realize just how short this story would be, only 38 pages!
February 5, 2024
love in the night: okay ig
the swimmers: really good
the swimmers: really good
July 3, 2024
(love in the night)
March 31, 2025
V pleasant.
December 12, 2021
Love in the Night: 4.5 stars
A beautifully written night at the Riviera - enthralling and romantically whimsical with bold young love at its finest.
The Swimmers: 2.75 stars
Great ending and overall thematic elements
January 2, 2016
Short stories that show what a master of the English language and natural story teller Fitzgerald was.
There's nothing else which needs to be said.
There's nothing else which needs to be said.
June 30, 2014
Liked it a lot more to follow :)
October 10, 2014
How is it I only adore Fitzgerald when his stories are short ones?
December 27, 2012
A great couple of stories by one of the best writers of e twentieth century.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews