'The Great Gatsby' Celebrates Its 100th Anniversary
Samantha Pauly and cast in 'The Great Gatsby' on Broadway (2024).
Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
One hundred years ago, on April 10, 1925, Charles Scribner's Sons published The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Since then, the novel has become a timeless classic of American fiction, inspiring countless other writers, as well as film and musical theater adaptations. Learn more about the classic novel and the many adaptations and other forms of inspiration it triggered by checking out these books at The New York Public Library.
Read the Original
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Young, handsome, and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby seems to have everything. But at his mansion east of New York City, in West Egg, Long Island, where the party never seems to end, he's often alone in the glittering Jazz Age crowd, watching and waiting, as speculation swirls around him—that he's a bootlegger, that he was a German spy during the war, that he even killed a man. As writer Nick Carraway is drawn into this decadent orbit, he begins to see beneath the shimmering surface of the enigmatic Gatsby, for whom one thing will always be out of reach: Nick's cousin, the married Daisy Buchanan, whose house is visible from Gatsby's just across the bay.
Adaptations and Retellings
The Chosen and the Beautiful
by Nghi Vo
Nghi Vo's debut novel reinvents Gatsby as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, telling the story of Jordan Baker. She has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She's also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.
Beautiful Little Fools
by Jillian Cantor
A powerful reimagining of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of the three women whose lives are unraveled by one man’s romantic obsession.
No One Is Coming to Save Us
by Stephanie Powell Watts
JJ Ferguson has returned home to Pinewood, North Carolina, to build his dream house and to pursue his high school sweetheart, Ava. But as he reenters his former world, where factories are in decline and the legacy of Jim Crow is still felt, he's startled to find that the people he once knew and loved have changed just as much as he has. Inspired by The Great Gatsby, this tale set in the contemporary South and follows the difficulties endured by an extended Black family with colliding visions of the American dream.
Nick
by Michael F. Smith
Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby's periphery, he was at the center of a very different story—one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I.
Don't Sleep With the Dead
by Nghi Vo
Nick Carraway has found a life and a living watching the mad magical spectacle of New York high society in the late 1930s. He's good at watching, and he's even better at pretending: pretending to be straight, pretending to be human, pretending he's forgotten the events of that summer in 1922. When he sees a familiar face at a club one night, it quickly becomes clear that dead or not, damned or not, Jay Gatsby isn't done with him.
The Gatsby Gambit
by Claire Anderson-Wheeler
Greta Gatsby, newly arrived at her brother Jay’s West Egg mansion, finds her idyllic summer shattered by scandal, betrayal, and murder, forcing her to navigate the secrets of a glittering yet dangerous world of wealth and deception.
Beautiful Villain
by Rebecca Kenney
When her cousin goes missing at an exclusive house party, Daisy Finnegan confronts the mysterious host, wealthy recluse Jay Gatsby, her childhood sweetheart, and is drawn into a world of dizzying wealth and dark obsession that culminates in an act of violence that reveals Gatsby’s secret.
Graphic Novels
The Great Gatsby
by K. Woodman-Maynard
From the green light across the bay to the billboard with spectacled eyes, the American masterpiece roars to life in this exquisite graphic novel—among the first adaptations of the book in this genre. Painted in lush watercolors, the inventive interpretation emphasizes both the extravagance and mystery of the characters, as well as the fluidity of Nick Carraway's unreliable narration.
Gatsby
by Jeremy Holt; illustrated by Felipe Cunha
When middle-class Singaporean student Lu Zhao is invited to spend a summer on Long Island with his rich cousin, Tommy, before attending Columbia University in the fall, his assimilation into the opulent American lifestyle straps him into a collision course fueled by designer drugs, sex, deceit, and murder. Set in present-day Long Island, Gatsby reimagines F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel as an LGBTQ-tinged, multicultural thriller for the internet age.
Nonfiction
So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
by Maureen Corrigan
As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power. Offering a fresh perspective on what makes Gatsby great—and utterly unusual—So We Read On takes us into archives, high school classrooms, and even out onto the Long Island Sound to explore the novel's hidden depths, a journey whose revelations include Gatsby's surprising debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its rocky path to recognition as a "classic," and its profound commentaries on the national themes of race, class, and gender.
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald
by Matthew J Bruccoli
Fitzgerald left behind his own mythology. He was a prince charming, a drunken author, a spoiled genius, the personification of the Jazz Age, and a sacrificial victim of the Depression. Here, Matthew J. Bruccoli strips away the façade of this flawed literary hero. He focuses on Fitzgerald as a writer by tracing the development of his major works and his professional career. Beginning with his Midwest upbringing and first published works as a teenager, this biography follows Fitzgerald’s life through the successful debut of This Side of Paradise, his turbulent marriage to Zelda Sayre, his time in Europe among The Lost Generation, the disappointing release of The Great Gatsby, and his ignominious fall.Gatsby Affair: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal That Shaped an American Classic
by Kendall Taylor
Explores Zelda Fitzgerald's affair with French aviator Edouard Jozan, the man on whom F. Scott Fitzgerald based his famous character Jay Gatsby.
Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of the Great Gatsby
by Sarah Churchwell
An investigation into the inspiration behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece traces his parties and quarrels at the side of Zelda amid the scandals and milestones of 1922 before a brutal double murder in New Jersey set the stage for what was to become an American classic.
Film Adaptations
The Great Gatsby (2013)
The 2013 film adaptation was just as big as the novel itself. Co-written and directed by Baz Luhrmann, the film stars an ensemble cast consisting of Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, and many more.
The Great Gatsby (1974)
Considered a faithful adaptation of the novel, the film stars Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern and Sam Waterston. The screenplay was adapted by Francis Ford Coppola with Jack Clayton directing.
Cookbooks
The Great Gatsby Cooking and Entertaining Guide: Decadent Dishes and Classic Cocktails from the Roaring Twenties
by Veronica Hincke
A culinary journey into the decadence and sophistication of the Jazz Age, recreating the extravagant meals and cocktails featured in F. Scott Fitzgerald's literary classic, The Great Gatsby. With the Roaring Twenties as a backdrop, each of the 64 recipes connect to the iconic novel and the excitement and celebrations of the era. In addition to the delectable recipes, there is historical context, entertaining anecdotes, and exquisite photos, providing a complete experience that captures the spirit of the novel.
The Great Gatsby Cookbook: Five Fabulous Roaring '20s Parties
by Cristina Smith
A cookbook and entertaining guide inspired by the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel includes step-by-step party preparation timelines, champagne and cocktail guides, and themes party decoration and fashion tips.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.