On this day...

F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' was published in 1925. Despite its modern recognisability, 'The Great Gatsby' was never intended to be the novel's title. 'Gatsby; Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires', 'Trimalchio in West Egg', 'Under the Red, White, and Blue' and 'Gold-Hatted Gatsby' were all cited as alternatives preferred by Fitzgerald. Indeed it was his wife, among others, who persuaded him to chose the one we now know; a title Fitzgerald himself described as, 'only fair, rather bad than good'.

Although it gained positive reviews, the book did not have the commercial success of Fitzgerald's previous works, and was even pointed to as evidence of his failings. Yet the book saw a revival, partly sparked by distribution of 150,000 copies to the American military in World War Two. This critique of the American Dream, is now thought of as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

On this day...

Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, died in 1948, aged 47. Born Zelda Sayre, she met her future husband at a country club in Alabama, where the then 21 year old first lieutenant was posted. Meetings become almost daily between the two, and were only interputed briefly, when Fitzgerald was summoned North. Yet a year later, Fitzgerald was discharged, and following a disrupted engagement, the two were married in 1920, just days after Fitzgerald published his first book, 'This Side of Paradise'.

 Labelled the 'first American Flapper' by her husband, Zelda's witty review of his work led to her publishing some of her own short stories and articles. By 1930, Fitzgerald has become severly alcoholic, and Zelda's mental and physical health suffered. She was admitted to a sanatorium in France, and shortly after was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Eight years after Fitzgerald's own death in 1940, Zelda was killed by a fire which spread through the hospital in which she was staying. Nine other women also died.

On this day...

American novelist Cornell Woolrich, was born in 1903. Woolrich started his literary career by writing six works, including 'Cover Charge'; all whose inspiration is to be found in the 'Jazz Age' literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yet after finding them commercially unviable, Woolrich turned his hand to detective novels, often writng under pseudonyms of William Irish and George Hopley. This proved more successful, leading to Woolrich being rated by biographer Francis Nevins Jr., as the fourth best crime writer of his era, behind only Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet and Erle Stanley Gardner. Many of Woolrich's most famous works were adapted for screen, including Hitchcock's 'Rear Window', and Truffaut's 'The Bride Wore Black; this leads to him having the title of more film noir screenplays adapted from his works than any other writer. Woolrich died in 1968 at the age of 64; yet alcoholism and further trouble, meant that upon his death he weighed only 89 pounds. He left his $850,000 estate to Columbia University.