Published: Sep. 15, 2012
Words: 23,870 (approximate)
Language: English
ISBN: 9781301605217

Short description

Exciting news in the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald studies! Path-breaking research has led to a woman who his scholars did not know was nicknamed Daisy, the name given Gatsby’s lost love. Here she is identified and her life investigated. Only now does her influence on two characters in This Side of Paradise and a major character in an early version of Tender is the Night become clear.

Extended description

Exciting news in the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald scholarship! Path-breaking research has led to new information about a woman in Fitzgerald’s life. This eBook investigates someone who Fitzgerald knew well from a young age. His many biographers and scholars, however, did not know that she was nicknamed Daisy. Fitzgerald named The Great Gatsby’s lost love Daisy Buchanan. The key to the real Daisy’s identity is unlocked and her life investigated here. For the first time her influence on three other characters in two Fitzgerald novels becomes clear. Fitzgerald borrows Daisy’s social position, cultivation, musical ability, and religion to create two figures in This Side of Paradise, as well as the projected murder victim in the earliest version of Tender is the Night.

Literary scholars know that Fitzgerald based most of his characters on real people. No one, however, guessed his choice of name for the main female character in The Great Gatsby was drawn from an actual person. He .. (Read more) Exciting news in the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald scholarship! Path-breaking research has led to new information about a woman in Fitzgerald’s life. This eBook investigates someone who Fitzgerald knew well from a young age. His many biographers and scholars, however, did not know that she was nicknamed Daisy. Fitzgerald named The Great Gatsby’s lost love Daisy Buchanan. The key to the real Daisy’s identity is unlocked and her life investigated here. For the first time her influence on three other characters in two Fitzgerald novels becomes clear. Fitzgerald borrows Daisy’s social position, cultivation, musical ability, and religion to create two figures in This Side of Paradise, as well as the projected murder victim in the earliest version of Tender is the Night.

Literary scholars know that Fitzgerald based most of his characters on real people. No one, however, guessed his choice of name for the main female character in The Great Gatsby was drawn from an actual person. He once acknowledged this woman as the model for Beatrice O’Hara Blaine in This Side of Paradise, but declined to name her publicly. Beatrice Blaine’s mystery model is revealed for the first time to be the same Daisy who lent her name to The Great Gatsby.

More than that, in Gatsby Fitzgerald fictionally “married” the much-admired Daisy to another influential figure in his life, Father Sigourney Fay: Fitzgerald gave Daisy Buchanan’s maiden name as Daisy Fay. Monsignor Fay has long been recognized as a major influence on This Side of Paradise and as a surrogate father for Fitzgerald. Only in Olmstead’s eBook do we understand that he also viewed Daisy as a surrogate mother. She notes Fitzgerald’s pairing the two as an ideal set of parents in This Side of Paradise. There he provides a backstory linking Father Darcy (identified as Father Fay) romantically with Beatrice O’Hara, before her marriage to Blaine.

Daisy wrote three of her own memoirs and annotated her husband’s letters. She maintained close friendships with Henry Adams, Henry James, and Edith Wharton, including correspondence with all three and travel with Wharton. She was a brilliant linguist who spoke French, German, and Italian fluently. She studied music at a conservatory, played the piano well, and associated with the great composers of her day. As a wife and mother she gave birth to eight children. Significantly for Fitzgerald, she managed both to convert to Catholicism and to retain that religion for her entire family against considerable obstacles. When Daisy and Fitzgerald’s mutual friend and spiritual resource Father Fay died, however, Fitzgerald gave up his Catholicism.

Research into Daisy’s fascinating life has taken Olmstead to Palazzo Odescalchi in Rome, where she was born and lived, and to Newport, RI, where the house Daisy inherited is still called her married name. The author read Daisy’s letters archived at Harvard’s Houghton Rare Books Library. She includes the complete text of a previously unpublished letter from Fitzgerald to Daisy’s son. This eBook includes four photographs of Daisy, as well as fifteen other pictures of people in her life and places she lived as a member of New York City’s famous society, the “Four Hundred.”

Andrea Olmstead investigated primary sources, the definitive secondary sources, biographies, letters, as well as specialized studies for Fitzgerald’s three novels, The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, and Tender is the Night. In addition to providing nineteen photographs, quoting from numerous Fitzgerald’s novels, stories, and letters, citing other scholars’ work, reproducing Daisy’s own unpublished letters as well as one by Fitzgerald, and tracing complicated family trees, Olmstead thoroughly annotates this eBook with 168 footnotes and provides a comprehensive bibliography.

Meet–for the first time–the Daisy who Fitzgerald admired.
(Less)

Tags

f scott fitzgerald, tender is the night, the great gatsby, this side of paradise, daisy buchanan, mrs margaret chanler, astor orphans, theodore chanler

Available ebook reading formats

Single purchase gains access to all formats. How to download ebooks to e-reading devices and apps.

Format	Full Book	Sample First 15%
Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser)	Buy	View sample
Kindle (.mobi for Kindle devices and Kindle apps)	Buy	Download sample
Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others)	Buy	Download sample
PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing)	Buy	No sample available
RTF (readable on most word processors)	Buy	No sample available
LRF (Use only for older model Sony Readers that don't support .epub)	Buy	Download sample
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)	Buy	Download sample
Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting)	Buy	No sample available
Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page)	Buy	No sample available

Reviews

Log-in to write a Review   Log-in to add a Video Review

Review by: Thomas Gregg on Oct. 13, 2012 :
This is an excellent blend of musical, literary, and social history about a fascinating woman, thoroughly researched and beautifully presented. Congratulations to the author!
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Reason for report:
— Select a reason — Book is or contains spam Book infringes copyright Same content is published elsewhere with different author (for ex., by private-label rights) Duplicate Incomplete work (such as sample or serial) Should be marked adults-only Category is inappropriate Poorly formatted Nudity or other inappropriate content on cover Nudity or other inappropriate visual content in book Inappropriate erotica content Cover image is improper Content is inappropriate Other violation of Terms of Service Other reason not shown above.

Additional details: