Flappers and Philosophers contains some of Fitzgerald's best early short stories, including "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and "The Offshore Pirate". First published in 1920, Flappers and Philosophers marked F. Scott Fitzgerald's entry into the realm of the short story, in which he adroitly proved himself "a master of the mechanism of short story technique" (Boston Transcript). Several of his most beloved tales are represented in this collection of eight, including "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" and "Head and Shoulders," with their particularly O. Henrylike twists; the poignant "Benediction" and "The Cut-Glass Bowl"; and "The Offshore Pirate," the octet's opening and most romantic story. It is a collection of masterful short works from an American literary icon that led The New York Times Book Review to note that "[no one] can fail to recognize Mr. Fitzgerald's talent and genius." This edition includes: -A concise introduction that gives readers important background information -A chronology of the author's life and work -A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context -An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations -Detailed explanatory notes -Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work -Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction -A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience The New York Times Book Review On the whole, Flappers and Philosophers represents the triumph of form over matter....There is no telling what good fortune awaits this volume of excellent short stories....The ingenuity which marks his works he may consider a necessity in American fiction of today....Mr. Fitzgerald is working out an idiom, and it is an idiom at once universal, American, and individual. F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise , in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald’s novels include The Beautiful and Damned , The Great Gatsby , and Tender Is the Night . He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon . Fitzgerald’s fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century. Chapter One: The Offshore Pirate This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea -- if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. About half-way between the Florida shore and the golden collar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was riding at anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-haired girl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France. She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity. Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad in blue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, were perched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied. And as she read she intermittently regaled herself by a faint application to her tongue of a half-lemon that she held in her hand. The other half, sucked dry, lay on the deck at her feet and rocked very gently to and fro at the almost imperceptible motion of the tide. The second half-lemon was well-nigh pulpless and the golden collar had grown astonishing in width, when suddenly the drowsy silence which enveloped the yacht was broken by the sound of heavy footsteps and an elderly man topped with orderly gray hair and clad in a white-flannel suit appeared at the head of the companionway. There he paused for a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the sun, and then seeing the girl under the awning he uttered a long even grunt of disapproval. If he had intended thereby to obtain a rise of any sort he was doomed to disappointment. The girl calmly turned over two pages, turned back one, raised the lemon mechanically to tasting distance, and then very faintly but quite unmistakably yawned. "Ardita!" said the gray-haired man sternly. Ardita uttered a small sound indicating nothing. "Ardita!" he repeated. "Ardita!" Ardita raised the lemon languidly, allowing three words to slip out before it reached her tongue. "Oh, shut up." "Ardita!" "What?" "Will you listen to me -- or will I have to get a servant to hold you while I talk to you?" The lemon descended slowly and scornfully. "Put it in writing." "Will