All Access Book Club: Tender is the Night

By Emma Sarconi

Beginning in January 2024, the Princeton Public Library and Special Collections at Princeton University Library launched a book club together. Called “All Access,” the club reads a book chosen by Princeton Public Library staff. When it comes time to discuss, the group convenes in Special Collections at Firestone Library. Beginning with a half-hour led by Reference and Outreach specialist Emma Sarconi, everyone has the opportunity to browse and view objects selected from Princeton’s collection that reflect the content, themes and history of that month’s pick. Then, public library staff lead the group in conversation.

April’s book was Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fourth and final novel. Written over ten personally tumultuous years, Scott completed the manuscript in late 1933. It first appeared as a serialized column in the January through April 1934 issues of Scribner’s Magazine, and the complete text was published on April 12th, 1934. Advertised as a “romance,” the novel reads much more as a tragedy, following the messy love triangle between Rosemary Hoyt, a seventeen-year-old film actress, and Dick and Nicole Diver, a glamourous American couple who Rosemary meets in the French Rivera on holiday. Like Fitzgerald’s other novels, Tender grapples with themes of money, fidelity, infatuation, and privilege. One of the things that makes the book particularly fascinating is how closely the “fictional” characters and events mirror those that factually took place in the life of Scott and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald. Like Nicole, Zelda suffered from mental illness her entire adult life, with repeated stays in mental institutions across the US and Europe. Like Dick, Scott had an affair with a young actress (Lois Moran) and wrestled with alcoholism. 

Scott considered Tender is the Night his greatest work and was puzzled and disappointed when it did not receive the critical and public success that he expected. Friend and contemporary Ernest Hemingway disagreed with public sentiment, stating that the genius of the novel became more apparent to him with each additional reading (based on the consensus in book club, more of the room would agree with the critics than Ernest). Scott never understood the lackluster response to his most labored-over work, worrying over it for the rest of his life. 

Princeton’s Fitzgerald holdings are vast and deep. The library has material related to the lives and work of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald across multiple collections held at both Firestone and Mudd Libraries.

Material related to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s time as a Princeton student can be found at Mudd Library in the Office of the Registrar Records (AC116), the Triangle Club Records (AC122), and the Nassau Literary Review, which has been digitized and is available online via the Papers of Princeton, as well as a variety of other scattered collections as detailed by Iliyah Coles ’22. 

A digitized copy of Fitzgerald’s scholastic card can be seen on the University Archives blog. 

At Firestone, notable collections include the F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers (C0187), the F. Scott Fitzgerald Additional Papers (C0188) and the Zelda Fitzgerald Papers (C0183). There is also Fitzgerald material in the Archives of Charles Scribner’s and Sons (C0101).

Some material, such as Fitzgerald’s corrected first edition of The Great Gatsby, the autograph manuscript of The Great Gatsby and the family scrapbooks are available through the finding aid for the F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers (C0187) as high-quality digital scans, available for public download.

Given the sheer amount of relevant material, it was difficult to choose what to showcase at the book club meeting, knowing that whatever appeared would only be a taste of the full story present in the collections. Here’s the final list: 

Annals of the fine arts (Vol 4) (19th-287 RHT) 

The title “Tender is the Night” is a reference to Alexander Keat’s poem “To a Nightingale” which first appeared in the The Annals of Final Arts in July 1819. 

Correspondence between Scott and Zelda from across their relationship (C0187, Box 40-41) 

Austrian Jacket, circa 1930 (C0183, Box 11) 

This Austrian jacket (“Herm Weghofer jun.” in Bad Ausee, Austria) was owned and worn by Zelda. It is thought to have been given to Zelda by Scott during her time as a patient at Les Rives de Prangins in Switzerland. Read more about this item in this “Our Favorite Things” blog post.

Tender is the Night – Notes and Manuscript drafts (C0187, Box 7, Folder 1-3) 

Scott wrote at least five drafts of Tender is the Night over the course of the ten years he spent writing it. These notes and manuscripts illustrate not only the ways in which the novel changed over that time, but also the ways in which the novel mirrors the Fitzgeralds’ lives. There is even a chart tracking the similarities and differences between Scott’s characterization of Nicole and the biography of Zelda. 

Craig House Medical Records on Zelda Fitzgerald Correspondence (C0745 Box 1, Folder 1)

Between 1933-1934 Zelda was institutionalized under the care of Dr. Clarence Slocum at the Craig House in Beacon New York. These records include correspondence between Zelda, Scott and Dr. Slocum as well as the physiactric evaluations the hospital wrote on Zelda at the time. This stay would have overlaped almost entirly wtih the publication of Tender and the initial public response. 

Tender is the Night (Corrected Typescripts) (C0187, Box 9, Folder 5-10, Box 10, Folder 1-9, Box 11, Folder 1-8, Box 12, Folder 1-3) 

Scott worked with longtime Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins to edit his manuscript copy of Tender is the Night in preparation for publication. 

The first public appearance of the novel, published in parts across four issues. 

Tender is the Night (1934) (3740.8.389.13)

Fitzgerald’s personal copy of the novel with light annotations. 

Tender is the Night (Malcolm Cowley Revision, Typescripts, 1951) (C0187, Box 14, Folder 1)

In 1948, eight years after Fitzgerald’s death, friend and author Malcolm Cowley revised Tender is the Night for a new edition. Cowley’s biggest change was to make the novel chronological, moving the flashback scene in book 2 to the beginning. In doing so, Cowley hoped to fix what he thought was the fundamental flaw of the novel and thus making way for the reception that Fitzgerald hoped. Today, the book is lauded as an American classic, but on the basis of Fitzgerald’s original text, not Cowley’s revision. 

Tender is the Night (1948) (3740.8.389.11) 

The first edition of Cowley’s revised edition. 

And there you have it! Keep an eye out for an announcement on the library website for upcoming bookclub topics and dates.

For more information and event registration, please see the Princeton Public Library website. For more information about seeing these items for yourself, check out the access services page of the Special Collections website.