37 BAUMAN RARE BOOKS Two-Page Autograph Letter Signed By F. Scott Fitzgerald Exceptional signed twopage autograph letter with excellent literary content, written entirely in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s hand, concerning mystery stories and publishing “Benjamin Button,” along with other novelettes and his earlier collection Flappers and Philosophers. The letter, written entirely in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s hand, reads, in part: “...The trouble is this: all the obvious stuff of romance & mystery while it is at the same time the best stuff has in the last twenty five years been pretty well pawed over by newspaper feature writers and detective story Shakespeares not to mention people like Doyle, Haggard, Wilkie Collins and Bulwer Lytton and the haute dime novelists. They’ve done their pawing with such clumsy hands that they’ve taken the color pretty much off the near east and the far east and the whole criminal world... The jewel business has fascinated me too and in fact I have done a satirical story on almost the materials you suggest. It appears as a novelette in the next Smart Set & wish that you’d read it. It’s the second of a series of such stories of which the first was The Russet Witch in the Metropolitan & the third was Benjamin Button... I will certainly keep in mind what you say and if some plan occurs to me to give an entirely new & un-shop-worn twist I’ll write it up and send it to you. Sincerely, F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Fitzgerald’s letter with evidence of a removed paper clip along with several pinholes from removed staples, small hole to page one, signature bold and clear. 39FITZGERALD, F. Scott. Autograph letter signed. St. Paul, Minnesota, circa May 9, 1922. Single sheet of unlined paper, measuring 8-1/2 by 11 inches, with hand-addressed mailed envelope. $22,000
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