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LITERARY HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Published in 1934, Tender is the Night is an uneven, late work by Fitzgerald, which sold less copies than his earlier works. Although all his writing addressed the society in which he lived during the twenties and thirties, this book may contain more autobiographical components than his earlier works and clearly focuses on the despair he felt in the 1930s, largely due to Zelda’s problems. This book, like his others, is both modernist and realistic, though this one has less intellectual control than The Great Gatsby. It is, however, more politically complex, subtly debunking east-west, capitalist myths.
In later printings of the book, significant changes were made. The order of the chapters was reconfigured according to a plan scribbled down by Fitzgerald after the first printing. The reordered text is a more traditional story and, therefore, eliminates several of the book’s flaws.