What a heart-wrenching story was the life of Scott and Zelda.

In this memoir, Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda we get a glimpse of who they were and how passionate their life was to have endured more than twenty-two years. In this book there are over three hundred love letters that just confirm what we already knew - it was one of the greatest love stories of our time. .

What an amazing read!!

Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda provided readers a glimpse into the complicated relationship between the Fitzgerald's. While their relationship was tumultuous, when they were happy, their happiness filled the pages, which was great to read.

I have been a fan of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and always look for books based on this infamous couple, so it was a given that this would be high on my anticipated reads list!

As an epistolary style writing covering the letters written as Scott was working on his novel The Last Tycoon, we see such a moving story between this love affair.

Battling alcoholism and many other demons in life, these letters capture the story with the highs and lows of this power couple.

Many thanks to Netgalley and publisher for the free copy. All opinions are my own

Absolutely loved the story being told with the letters between the two. It was an inside look at the relationship. The personal letters were like actually knowing the couple and the relationship between them. One of my favorite memoirs by far!

I received Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is pure history, in possibly one of the most poetic forms possible. The letters that Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald wrote to each other are stunning. Their emotions are spilled on the page in a way I expect could not be created by any lesser authors. Their relationship is a great tragedy that even they felt necessary to fictionalize, and so reading through it is as easy as a novel. The minimal notes do just enough to allow the reader an entire picture of their lives at the time of each letter. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to get to know these characters, the impact of mental illness, or get a personal picture of history.

I absolutely loved this book. I am so amazed that the letters between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald were found and preserved. Even more impressive is that these letters were pieced together to form an intimate look at the personal life of this literary couple. On the outside, Scott and Zelda appeared glamorous and put together. Cocktails, great food and artistic friends were only a small part of the equation though. Their attractive lifestyle was filled with alcoholism, health issues, mental illness and financial struggles. I didn't realize until I read this book, that Scott and Zelda lived a good portion of their lives apart. With Zelda in and out of mental health institutions and Scott traveling for work, caring for their daughter and managing his own health issues, their relationship truly depended on their letters to one another. Even though their life together was filled with heartbreak, Scott and Zelda managed to hold on to hope and dreams for a better tomorrow.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a lover of literature and the works of great American writers from the 20th century. It was an honor to get an inside peek into the once private letters of such an iconic couple.

This was such an enlightening look into the tempestuous and complicated relationship between Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think that many literary lovers have come to recognize how big of an influence Zelda was on his writing and life, so the peek into her writing was particularly compelling. You truly get to see the ups and downs of their relationship, all of the good, bad and in-between. While this may not be an entry-level volume for the uninitiated to Zelda and Scott, it's a valuable resource for those who want to immerse themselves into their world.

Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for the ARC of this collection.

Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda

The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Zelda Fitzgerald

Scribner

Biographies & Memoirs

Pub Date 23 Jul 2019

I am reviewing a copy of Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda through Scribner and Netgalley:

Scott and Zelda met in Montgomery Alabama, Zelda’s hometown in July of 1918, likely at a country club dance.

In August of 1918 Scott sends Zelda a chapter from his novel The Romantic Egotist.

For over twenty two years Scott and Zelda remain devoted to each other through her mental illnesses and his battle with alcoholism.

Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda includes three hundred love letters that were collected to show why their love story was called one of the greatest of the twentieth century.

I found Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda to be a beautifully done and well researched glimpse into the lives of two people who through the best and the worst. A true love story, by two of the greatest literary influences in the twentieth century!

Five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

The author's painstaking research and attention to detail is obvious in the writing of this book. There were many facts that I only discovered after reading this!

I have long been a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I first read him as most people do, in a high school English class with The Great Gatsby, but went on to devour his other work throughout my college summers because, as only a pretentious college student can categorize something, I deemed Fitzgerald “best read in the summer”. So, it was apropos that I received an ARC of the newest edition of Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald this July. Other publications have included letters between Scott and Zelda, however this is the first to include nearly all of their surviving letters to each other chronologically in one volume.

While I’ve always been enchanted by the Fitzgeralds love (the glitz, the passion, the Jazz Age!) I also knew that their relationship was, at times, very tumultuous, in large part due to both Zelda and Scott’s respective mental health struggles. Zelda is believed to have suffered from Schizophrenia during the initial stages of the disease being classified as a diagnosis and Scott with alcoholism. Due to Zelda moving various times and having a shocking amount of fires in her lifetime, the majority of the letters published are from Zelda to Scott, who kept meticulous files of his received correspondence. As a result, the reader is given amazing insight into the mind of a woman who is determined to maintain her identity as a writer, a mother, and a wife while simultaneously being painfully aware of her deteriorating mental health-her descriptions of her symptoms and her acknowledgement of her inability to control them are truly heartbreaking. I found myself continually underlining beautiful sentences within Zelda’s letters and was shocked to learn that Scott used one of my favorite lines of Zelda’s (a haunting and beautiful description of a graveyard) in This Side of Paradise.

It almost felt like an invasion of privacy to read the most intimate moments of the Fitzgeralds’ lives described by the sources themselves. The letters show the complexities that made up both Scott and Zelda, putting a strong sense of humanity to two people who, while strongly known as intellectuals, are oftentimes unfairly characterized as images of frivolity and fame within a glamorized time.

What's more romantic than a love story? A dramatic, tumultuous, and relatively short love story told through the handwritten letters of the 1920s-1930s iconic couple, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

In this compilation, edited by Jackson Bryer and Cathy Barks, the dynamic relationship between Scott and Zelda is explored through a collection of their letters, notes, and telegrams to each other over the course of their relationship.

Starting from when they began dating in 1918, the young couple were clearly in love, and their letters are full of hope and wistful longing for reaching their dreams. In the collection, due to the loss of his letters, Scott is mostly communicating through telegrams, but in the mostly all-caps statements, you can tell he is driven as a writer and determined to woo Miss Zelda Sayre. She in return is equally devoted and eager for their marriage, though she does mention her flirtations and dates with other men while Scott is in New York. This is a hint of their underlying jealousies of each other. As time goes on, the success of This Side of Paradise in 1920 spurs the couples nuptials, as well as their launch into the party society in New York City.

Cue all the roaring 1920's imagery, which Scott brought to his novels The Beautiful and the Damned and The Great Gatsby. However, these parties weren't his only inspiration- Scott often used lines and themes from his letters to Zelda for his work. However, this is also where boundaries and lines were being crossed, and we start to see problems develop in their relationship. Scott and Zelda struggled financially from the 1920's to the mid-1930s, trying to keep up with their grand lifestyle, and eventually moving to Europe where the dollar was much stronger in the exchange rate. This is also where Scott's alcoholism becomes evident, and where Zelda's mental state started to wain. The letters from this period show the fissures in the relationship, even though the couple still remain desperately determined to support and love each other.

From there, the letters display the dissolution of this couple- torn apart more by their illnesses than anything else. Through it all, their letters remained a constant communication of honesty, love, and resolution. Also, coming from two writers, they are wonderfully periodic, clever, charming, descriptive, and animated. Their letters are windows to those outside their relationship, and to have them arranged and annotated as the editors did offers the reader a wonderful insight and understanding that would have been missed based on the less intimate, public persona of this couple.

I've truly enjoyed Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda, and will certainly be recommending it to my historical memoir fans.

I really enjoy reading about the Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald as well as this time period. Although reading their personal letters felt a bit invasive to their privacy, it gave a whole lot of insight into their relationship. While they no doubt loved each other deeply, I also felt that they were toxic together. You really got a sense of their feelings throughout.

I have read many books about F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. I enjoy books set during their time and they had a very great influence on so many people and customs of their era. To read their actual letters to each other was a treat, filling in some blanks and explaining the gaps in my knowledge of their story. The book was fascinating. Almost like you had found a treasure trove of letters while clearing your grandparents attic. I was easily lost in the book and finished it in two days.

"Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald" book combine survived Fitzgeralds' letters that Scott and Zelda have exchanged from the time they have met and thru Scott's death.

For me, as a newbie to Scott and Zelda's love story, this book was a phenomenal information source that explained very thoroughly Fitzgeralds' relationship and reasons that drove Scott to alcoholism and Zelda to insanity.

One thing that fascinated me the most was their dedication to each other. Even in the period of Zelda's first breakdown, Fitzgeralds were able to sustain their alliance despite the fact they have blamed each other for their failures. It was an interesting fact to see that while apart - Fitzgeralds' lead calmer lives, but once together - their worlds would collapse with rapid speed.

While reading Fitzgeralds' letters - I often caught myself thinking: how different their lives would become if they would never be married, or separated once their marriage problems have begun. Would Zelda lose her sanity? Would Scott's alcoholism be prevented?

In the end, I find Fitzgeralds' story love story passionate and romantic. Two highly intelligent people hopelessly in love, whose remarkable personalities clash once together, but remained devoted to each other thru their best times and worst. Their story is inspirational but tragique at the same time.

Thank you, NetGalley for an advanced free copy of the book.

I didn’t really know much about the Fitzgeralds relationship prior to this. I had heard Zelda was a bit much and that was it. Didn’t even know they’d had a child. This book goes back and forth from facts and assumptions to letters written by the two, though mostly from Scott as it appears he kept more of her letters than she did his. Their relationship seems terribly co-dependent based on this book and their letter and it gives a very different insight into their relationship.

Thank you to Scribner and Net Galley for the chance to read and review this book. I really liked this book! I have read other books about Scott and Zelda, but this one was really interesting because it contained their own words. I liked the way the author added details to add clarity to some of the letters because some of them (especially Zelda's) were not always easy to understand. I thought their lives were a bit sad-they were both so talented, but there was so many problems in their lives. A couple of things were clear to me though-they loved each other and they loved their daughter. Fascinating memoir about F. Scott and Zelda!

Dear Scott Dearest Zelda

As a lover of memoirs, the description of this book instantly drew me to it. It is one thing to read an author’s carefully selected words of their own life or someone else’s. It is quite different to read personal letters between a loving and also sometimes chaotic couple. While it felt like an intrusion of privacy to read these letters between Scott and Zelda, it was difficult to turn away from them as well. The thoughts of Zelda were often times confusing but always quite beautiful. I was surprised by how much her writing changed throughout their courtship and marriage, especially in the letters during her third breakdown. This book includes over 300 letters between the couple. While the majority of them are from Zelda to Scott, the last part of the book “The Final years,” finally includes regular letters from Scott as well. I must say this was my favorite section. Both of them wrote so well and so caringly, and it was heartbreaking to read the final pages. This is not your everyday recommendation for just anybody but if you are looking for a book that takes a closer look at Scott’s and Zelda’s relationship through their struggles and triumphs or are intrigued by how her mental illness has affected her life, then this is the right book for you.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in return for an honest review.

I love reading anything about Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald. I'm a bit fan of The Great Gatsby, as well as any book or movie that depicts Zelda & Scott's relationship. This book of letters did not disappoint. I feel that Zelda is such a unique person and I loved reading the details of their daily lives. Can definitely see where they both took aspects of their real life and put into their writings. Great book!

Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda acts as both a history and epistolary collection of two of the most famous figures in literature, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. He was well known for his alcoholism, her for her supposed schizophrenia (modern doctors have a wealth of other considerations). After a whirlwind romance and a literary career that peaked and plummeted, it seemed that all that was left of the It couple of the 1920's was for Scott to die of an alcohol-induced heart attack, and Zelda to be burned alive in an insane asylum.  Tragic, yes, but there is so much more to these two. 

Reading Zelda's letters, of which there are far more than Scott's in this collection, gives some pretty solid evidence to the claim that Scott Fitzgerald borrowed heavily from his wife's writing. Her letters are brilliant, and often address the parts of Scott Fitzgerald that are quietly ignored in literary circles. His alcoholism was far worse, according to Zelda, than has been fully documented. Whether it is him passing out in random places, or causing them to be uninvited from others, it's clear that Zelda was not the only one with secrets. The letters give the reader a feeling that her period of ballet obsession may have been just an attempt to be seen as someone other than the wife of America's favored son. 

If you're not prepared to feel like you've had your heart ripped from your chest, Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda should probably not be on your next to read list. If you want to see more behind the brilliance masked as insanity that was Zelda Fitzgerald, buy this book immediately.  I'm not here saying she wasn't mentally ill; she definitely suffered. However, I feel that Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda shows a side of the couple normally hidden away in Princeton archives. 

Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda is available updated from Scribners July 23, 2019.

Reading the intricate details of the Fitzgerald’s life felt like a very rare and sumptuous treat as I devoured every word. I felt that the arrangement of the entire book was done so extremely well. I didn’t want the book to end! I suppose I could continue reading about the Fitzgerald’s for all of my life and never get bored.