F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned , "marks an advance over This Side of Paradise ," Edmund Wilson wrote. "The style is more nearly mature and the subject more nearly unified, and there are scenes that are more convincing than any in his previous fiction."

Published in 1922, it chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux rich and New York's nightlife, of reckless ambition and squandered talent.