The 22 Books F. Scott Fitzgerald Called "Required Reading"

F. Scott Fitzgerald was the author of The Great Gatsby, a book that is a fixture on high school English reading lists. But what was on the famed novelist’s own shelves? 

Fortunately, Fitzgerald left behind an answer to this question in the form of a list of books he considered “required reading.” Unfortunately, the list was written under quite difficult circumstances. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Difficult Summer

In 1936, the author—who had published Gatsby 11 years prior—was at a low point. His wife Zelda was a psychiatric patient at Asheville, North Carolina’s Highland Hospital, and the author was staying in a nearby hotel. 

Fitzgerald was struggling financially, and his drinking had become an increasingly severe problem. That summer, he had fractured his shoulder at the hotel pool and also fired a revolver in the hotel, which some interpreted as a suicide threat. This was likely simply a rumor, but Fitzgerald reportedly did grow suicidal after a newspaper story describing his fractured mental state came out following the incident with the gun.

Because of all this, the hotel ordered that Fitzgerald be attended by a nurse. That nurse was Dorothy Richardson, and it was for her that Fitzgerald penned the following reading list. At the top, Richardson wrote, “These are books that Scott thought should be required reading.”

The 22 Books on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Reading List

This list is not composed exclusively of classic or well-known novels. It does, however, include books by major authors like Marcel Proust, Leo Tolstoy, and William Faulkner. 

Below is the full list:

Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser

The Life of Jesus, by Ernest Renan

A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen

Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson

The Old Wives’ Tale, by Arnold Bennett

The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett

The Red and the Black, by Stendhal

The Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant, translated by Michael Monahan

An Outline of Abnormal Psychology, edited by Gardner Murphy

The Stories of Anton Chekhov, edited by Robert N. Linscott

The Best American Humorous Short Stories, edited by Alexander Jessup

Victory, by Joseph Conrad

The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France

The Plays of Oscar Wilde

Sanctuary, by William Faulkner

Within a Budding Grove, by Marcel Proust

The Guermantes Way, by Marcel Proust

Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust

South Wind, by Norman Douglas

The Garden Party, by Katherine Mansfield

War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete Poetical Works

The Books F. Scott Fitzgerald Loved

Fitzgerald often reflected on the authors he loved and those that influenced his own writing. The poetry of John Keats was a major influence for him, inspiring some of The Great Gatsby’s poetic and descriptive language. 

Fitzgerald idolized Keats, keeping a volume of his poetry by his desk as he wrote and even naming his fourth novel, Tender Is the Night, after a line in Keats’ poem “Ode to the Nightingale.” Fittingly, an anthology of poems by Keats and his contemporary, Percy Shelley, appears as the final entry on Fitzgerald’s 22-book list.

Another author who inspired Fitzgerald in a big way was Joseph Conrad, the Polish-British writer known for classic novels like Heart of Darkness and Nostromo. Fitzgerald once called Nostromo the “great novel of the last 50 years,” and elaborated on his love for Conrad’s work in a letter to The Chicago Tribune. 

“I'd rather have written Conrad's Nostromo than any other novel because Nostromo, the man, intrigues me so much,” he wrote. “[Conrad] took this man of the people and imagined him with such a completeness that there is no use of any one else pondering over him for some time. He is one of the most important types in our civilization, one that always made a haunting and irresistible appeal to me.” The author also told H. L. Mencken that he had “learned a lot from Conrad,” and noted that Conrad’s writing inspired some of The Great Gatsby.

Another influence on Fitzgerald’s work was Ernest Hemingway, a close friend and rival of Fitzgerald’s. The authors were contemporaries and significantly influenced each other’s writing. 

“It was Ernest Hemingway who developed to me, in conversation [and demonstrated in the last sentence of A Farewell to Arms] that the dying fall was preferable to the dramatic ending under certain conditions,” Fitzgerald once said of the man. On the other hand, they did share something of a literary rivalry at times, so Fitzgerald may not have been eager to actively promote his work.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Life of Literature, Excess, and Changing Fortunes

Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended Princeton but left in 1917 to join the army. During this time, afraid of impending death, he quickly wrote a novel called The Romantic Egotist, which was rejected by publishers. 

Around that time, he fell in love with an 18-year-old Zelda Sayre. The pair became engaged, but Sayre broke off the engagement due to concerns about Fitzgerald’s finances.

In 1919, Fitzgerald submitted a revised version of the novel called This Side of Paradise to publishers. It was accepted, and made Fitzgerald into an overnight sensation.

He married Zelda a week after its release, and the pair soon became literary celebrities. They spent time in Connecticut and New York City, living a notoriously glamorous, hard-partying lifestyle as Fitzgerald wrote his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned. 

In the coming years, the couple’s first child was born and Fitzgerald’s drinking intensified. The family fled to France to spend time with the expat community and to seek a calmer place where Fitzgerald could write his next book. What emerged from this period was The Great Gatsby, which was published in 1925. The book was an overall critical success but initially sold somewhat poorly.

The following years were increasingly challenging for the young family. Fitzgerald’s alcoholism worsened, and Zelda began pursuing a career as a dancer, only to suffer a mental breakdown. She was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, which ultimately led to her institutionalization. Fitzgerald’s next book, Tender Is the Night, was not published until 1934. 

By then, the Fitzgeralds were in severe debt. In 1937, Fitzgerald had started a new career as a scriptwriter in Hollywood and had begun a new relationship with Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. He died of a heart attack in 1940, at the age of 44 ,with his final novel half-finished.

In some ways, Fitzgerald’s life resembles that of many of his protagonists—full of idealism, dreams, and glamour, but also marred by self-destructiveness and chaos. In the years since his death, though, he has become regarded as an icon of the Jazz Age as well as one of the most famous and well-respected writers of the 20th century.