The Diamond As Big As The Ritz

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is a novella by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was first published in the June 1922 issue of The Smart Set magazine, and was included in Fitzgerald's 1922 short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. Much of the story is set in Montana, a setting that may have been inspired by the summer that Fitzgerald spent near White Sulphur Springs, Montana in 1915. Orson Welles adapted the story into a radio play in 1945 and another version was presented three times on the program Escape between 1947 and 1949. A teleplay version was broadcast on Kraft Theatre in 1955. The story's sisters, Kismine and Jasmine, were portrayed by Lee Remick and Elizabeth Montgomery, who were unknowns of 20 and 22 at the time. Mickey Mouse No. 47 (Apr./May 1956) contains a retelling of Fitzgerald's story under the title "The Mystery of Diamond Mountain", scripted by William F. Nolan and Charles Beaumont and illustrated by Paul Murry. Jimmy Buffett recounts the story in the song "Diamond As Big As The Ritz" from his 1995 album Barometer Soup. Famous novells of the author F. S. Fitzgerald: "This Side of Paradise", "The Beautiful and Damned", "The Great Gatsby", "Tender Is the Night", "The Last Tycoon", "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz", "May Day", "The Rich Boy".

Six entrancing tales represent the essential Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age spirit: "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "The Ice Palace," "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," "May Day," "The Jelly-Bean," and "The Offshore Pirate."

Includes stories such as: The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, The Cut-Glass Bowl, May Day, The Rich Boy, Crazy Sunday, An Alcoholic Case, The Lees of Happiness, The Lost Decade and Babylon Revisited.

Evoking the Jazz-Age world that would later appear in his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, this essential Fitzgerald collection contains some of the writer’s most famous and celebrated stories. In “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” an extraordinary child is born an old man, growing younger as the world ages around him. “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” a fable of excess and greed, shows two boarding school classmates mired in deception as they make their fortune in gemstones. And in the classic novella “May Day,” debutantes dance the night away as war veterans and socialists clash in the streets of New York. Opening the book is a playful and irreverent set of notes from the author, documenting the real-life pressures and experiences that shaped these stories, from his years at Princeton to his cravings for luxury to the May Day Riots of 1919. Taken as a whole, this collection brings to vivid life the dazzling excesses, stunning contrasts, and simmering unrest of a glittering era. Its 1922 publication furthered Fitzgerald's reputation as a master storyteller, and its legacy staked his place as the spokesman of an age.

A teenager from a small Mississippi River town is sent to a private boarding school near Boston, surrounded by wealthy classmates, but has a secret that would amaze them all.

Together, these forty-three stories compose a vivid picture of a lost era, but their brilliance is timeless.

The Great Gatsby has long been celebrated as the archetypal American novel, and its influence on later writers from J.D. Salinger to John OHara cannot be overestimated. Fitzgerald looks deeply into himself and his milieu to create the story of James Gatz, a self-educated nobody from Kentucky who has amassed a fortune and adopted the persona of Jay Gatsby, an Oxford-educated man about town, for the sole purpose of winning back the heart of Daisy, the woman he loved in his youth. Daisy is now married to Tom Buchanan a brutal, ignorant racist who embodies the corruption that can come with unlimited wealth. As Gatsby, Daisy and Tom play out the drama in a small Long Island town, Fitzgerald makes it clear that life is meaningless when it is based on money and glamour at the expense of the solid American values of self-reliance and hard work.