F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Accounts Are Published

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s handwritten records of his career and life, have been made available online to his vast array of fans.

The author of The Great Gatsby kept records of his books, income, and various events that occurred through his life were kept in a book that were scribed by the author. You can now view this courtesy of the University of South Carolina.

One of the details from the book is that Fitzgerald made $2,000 from The Great Gatsby when it was published back in 1925.

This then increased after the film rights were sold for the novel just a year later, and he was awarded a further $16,666 for his effort.

These details have been made available just as a Hollywood adaptation of his seminal novel is set to hit the screens. The Great Gatsby is due out in the next few weeks, and is directed by Baz Luhrmann, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan.

An English professor at the University of South Carolina, Park Bucker, remarked, “This is going to be an amazing thing for students to pore over and dip into. He created his own database. We do it on computers now, but he did it for himself.”

Elizabeth Sudduth, who is the director of the university’s library, stated, “This is a record of everything Fitzgerald wrote, and what he did with it, in his own hand. We know he didn’t spell very well. And his arithmetic wasn’t much better.”

The ledger documents his life between 1919 and 1938, is divided into five sections, and gives a year-by-year account of his life.

Fitzgerald also looks back on his birth with an autobiographical section. Scribing about February 1900, he wrote, “He celebrated the new century by swallowing a penny and catching the measles. He got rid of both of them.”

Are you looking forward to The Great Gatsby?

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