The Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss F Scott Fitzgerald’s finest novel, published in 1925, one of the great American novels of the twentieth century. It is told by Nick Carraway, neighbour and friend of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby. In the age of jazz and prohibition, Gatsby hosts lavish parties at his opulent home across the bay from Daisy Buchanan, in the hope she’ll attend one of them and they can be reunited. They were lovers as teenagers but she had given him up for a richer man who she soon married, and Gatsby is obsessed with winning her back.
The image above is of Robert Redford as Gatsby in a scene from the film 'The Great Gatsby', 1974.
With
Sarah Churchwell
Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of London
Philip McGowan
Professor of American Literature at Queen’s University, Belfast
And
William Blazek
Associate Professor and Reader in American Literature at Liverpool Hope University
Produced by Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson
Last on
LINKS AND FURTHER READING
READING LIST:
Ronald Berman, The Great Gatsby and Modern Times (University of Illinois Press, 1994)
Ronald Berman, The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s World of Ideas (University of Alabama Press, 1997)
Harold Bloom (ed.), The Great Gatsby (Chelsea House, 2006)
J. Bryer and C. Barks (eds.), Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Scribner, 2002)
Sarah Churchwell, Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby (Virago Press, 2013)
Maureen Corrigan, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures (Little, Brown, 2014)
Kirk Curnutt, The Cambridge Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Scott Donaldson (ed.), Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (G. K. Hall, 1984)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli), A Life in Letters (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994)
B. Mangum (ed.), F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Timo Müller (ed.), Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (De Gruyter, 2017), especially ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby’ by A. Gross
Broadcasts
- Thu 14 Jan 2021 09:00Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
- Thu 14 Jan 2021 21:30Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
Featured in...
![]()
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald—The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
A mixture of programmes based around the classic novel.
![]()
20th Century—In Our Time
Browse the 20th Century era within the In Our Time archive.
![]()
Culture—In Our Time
Popular culture, poetry, music and visual arts and the roles they play in our society.
In Our Time podcasts
Download programmes from the huge In Our Time archive.
The In Our Time Listeners' Top 10
If you’re new to In Our Time, this is a good place to start.
Arts and Ideas podcast
Download the best of Radio 3's Free Thinking programme.
Podcast
-
![]()
In Our Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.
