Babylon Revisited
Encyclopedia
"Babylon Revisited" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald
, written in 1930 and first published on February 21, 1931 in the Saturday Evening Post. It was later adapted into a movie called The Last Time I Saw Paris
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". Brief flashbacks take place in the Jazz age itself. Much of it is based on the author's own experiences.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
, written in 1930 and first published on February 21, 1931 in the Saturday Evening Post. It was later adapted into a movie called The Last Time I Saw Paris
The Last Time I Saw Paris
The Last Time I Saw Paris is a 1954 romantic drama made by MGM. It is loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Babylon Revisited." It was directed by Richard Brooks, produced by Jack Cummings and filmed on locations in Paris and the MGM backlot. The screenplay was by Julius J. Epstein,...
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Summary
The story is set in the year after the crash of the 1929, just after what Fitzgerald called the "Jazz AgeJazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
". Brief flashbacks take place in the Jazz age itself. Much of it is based on the author's own experiences.
Basis in real life
The story is based on a true incident regarding Fitzgerald, his and his wife Zelda's daughter "Scottie", and Zelda's sister Rosalind and her husband Newman Smith (a banker based in Belgium, who as a colonel in the U.S. Army in World War II would be in charge of worldwide strategic deception for the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff), on whom Marion and Lincoln Peters are based. Rosalind and Newman had not been able financially to live as well as Scott and Zelda had lived during the 1920s, and they had always regarded Scott as an irresponsible drunkard whose obsession with high living was responsible for Zelda's mental problems. When Zelda suffered a breakdown and was committed to a sanitarium in Switzerland, Rosalind felt that Scott was unfit to raise their daughter and that Rosalind and Newman should adopt her.External links
- Text of "Babylon Revisited" at Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
Australia - "Babylon Revisited" Study Guide by Lina Goldberg
- Expostulation and Thesis by Thomas A. Larson
- "Babylon Revisited" in a nutshell at shmoop.com