Beschreibung:

Fitzgerald, F. ScottTender is the Night. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934
8vo. Publisher's dark blue-green cloth, spine lettered in gilt; boards lightly soiled. Pictorial dust jacket; spine panel lightly faded, light wear and a few short tears to edges, toning along fold of interior black flap, still a particularly bright example.
First edition, a very fine association copy, inscribed to Donald Ogden Stewart on the front free endpaper: "Dear Don: This will amuse you I think. Scott." 
Donald Ogden Stewart (1894-1980) was a prominent American humorist and writer who achieved success in Golden Age Hollywood writing movies such as The Philadelphia Story, which won him the Oscar for best screenplay. He was a lifelong friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a relationship that began in the Summer of 1919 when Fitzgerald was reworking his draft of The Romantic Egoist into what would become his debut novel, This Side of Paradise. Stewart had literary aspirations of his own, and was among Fitzgeralds' pre-publication readers: "I got him to lend me [the manuscript of] This Side of Paradise, written in pencil. I approved of it, with my Yale reservations. I didn't know enough to appreciate his style and form, but the content was exciting" (Stewart, p. 86).
Fitzgerald encouraged Stewart's literary ambition in turn, and he helped kickstart his career by connecting him with an old Princeton friend at Vanity Fair. Following the success of his H.G. Wells satire, A Parody Outline of History, he earned an invitation to the famous Algonquin Round Table. Throughout the 1920s he was part of a literary community that—in addition to the Fitzgeralds—included Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, John Dos Passos, and Ernest Hemingway. Stewart joined Hemingway on the trip to Pamplona that served as the inspiration for his debut novel, The Sun Also Rises; also serving as a model for the character of Bill Gorton.  
After returning from Europe, Stewart settled down in California and embarked upon a career in Hollywood. There, his path crossed once more with Fitzgerald, who had returned to Hollywood in dire financial straits when the cost of his opulent lifestyle and Zelda's medical bills finally caught up with him. The pair worked together (unsuccessfully) on screenplays for The Women (George Cukor, 1939), and the never-realized Air Raid (Paramount, 1939), but Fitzgerald privately ridiculed Stewart for his increasingly liberal politics (which would eventually earn Stewart a place on the Hollywood blacklist). It was quite possibly during this final period of collaboration—Fitzgerald died in 1940—that he inscribed this copy of Tender is the Night to Donald Ogden Stewart.
Tender in the Night was Fitzgerald's last novel and, in his own opinion, his finest work. In the nineteen years which had passed between the publication of The Great Gatsby and the appearance of Tender is the Night in April 1934, anticipation and expectation had built around what would be Fitzgerald's last novel. However, on publication, it achieved neither the acclaim nor the sales which Fitzgerald hoped for, an outcome which puzzled him for the rest of his life. This was despite a number of overwhelmingly positive reviews, including that of John Chamberlain for The New York Times, who wrote: "Mr. Fitzgerald has not forgotten his craftsmanship... Beyond the story, there is [his] ability to catch the "essence of a continent", the flavor of a period, the fragrance of a night and a snatch of old song, in a phrase."
"...a wonderful evocation of the second phase of American expatriates ... described with flashes of genius by an expert in self-destruction... " (Connolly).
REFERENCE:Bruccoli A15.1.a; Connolly 79; Donald Ogden Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! An Autobiography, London: 1975
PROVENANCE:Donald Ogden Stewart (presentation inscription) — Roger Rechler (his sale, Christie's New York, 11 October 2002, lot 91, achieved $119,500)