The Beautiful and Damned
Complete textAnthony Patch, a young man with money and expectations, drifts among friends while imagining a more distinguished life. His relationship with Gloria brings glamour and desire into a future increasingly shaped by spending, waiting and the belief that something better will arrive.
Continue readingAbout The Beautiful and Damned
The narration gives ample room to clever conversation while exposing the inertia beneath it. Rooms, clothes and leisure become measures of self-image, and the expectation of inheritance changes the meaning of work. Notice how judgments that sound sophisticated can protect characters from examining the practical consequences of their habits.
Reading focus
Compare Anthony and Gloria's images of themselves with the ordinary decisions through which their shared life develops.
This reading edition contains 124,656 words in 9 original sections. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: F Scott Fitzgerald. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well…
Contents
All sections- BOOK ONE — CHAPTER I ANTHONY PATCH35 min
- BOOK ONE — CHAPTER II PORTRAIT OF A SIREN54 min
- BOOK ONE — CHAPTER III THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES72 min
- BOOK TWO — CHAPTER I THE RADIANT HOUR76 min
- BOOK TWO — CHAPTER II SYMPOSIUM93 min
- BOOK TWO — CHAPTER III THE BROKEN LUTE61 min
- BOOK THREE — CHAPTER I A MATTER OF CIVILIZATION61 min
- BOOK THREE — CHAPTER II A MATTER OF AESTHETICS61 min
- BOOK THREE — CHAPTER III NO MATTER!58 min
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Is this the complete The Beautiful and Damned?
This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 9 sections and 124,656 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
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