This Side of Paradise

First published in 1920, this novel follows Amory Blaine from a restless Midwestern childhood through Princeton, literary posing, and a string of romances, including the debutante Rosalind who refuses him because he has no secure fortune. The war interrupts his youth; afterward he works in advertising, wanders, and tests socialist and aesthetic ideas that do not hold. Episodes mix narrative, verse, and playlet as he tries to define himself against family money, Catholicism, and the American upper class. The book is a coming-of-age novel of privilege and disappointment, not a later jazz-age party chronicle.

Bound in mid-blue cloth, covers blocked in black and silver with titles and decorations. Grey endpapers. Light blue slipcase.