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Graphic Arts

Graphic Arts
Firestone Library
One Washington Road
Princeton, NJ 08540
609-258-3184
Graphic Arts Librarian
609-258-3197

Thanks to the generous donation of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973, the Graphic Arts Colleciton houses the original dust jacket art of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first edition of The Great Gatsby. Writing for the Princeton University Library Chronicle in 1992, Scribner explained how he came by the original gouache painting by Francis Cugat (1896-1981). His cousin, George Schieffelin, discovered the Cugat gouache sketch in a trash can of publishing “dead matter” and took it home. Passed down through the family, the art eventually came into the hands of Charles Scribner III, who kindly donated it along with hundreds of other books, papers, and works of art to Princeton.

According to Scribner’s research, Francis Cugat was born in Spain and raised in Cuba along with his brother, the musician and orchestra leader Xavier Cugat. Francis worked in New York City as an illustrator in the 1920s and 1930s, before moving to Hollywood. The Great Gatsby commission came in 1924, while the book was still unfinished. Originally titled “Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires,” Fitzgerald also toyed with calling it “Trimalchio in West Egg,” “On the Road to West Egg,” and “Gold-hatted Gatsby.”

Fitzgerald liked the design Cugat proposed (for which the artist was paid $100) and wrote to his publisher, “For Christ’s sake don’t give anyone that jacket you’re saving for me. I’ve written it into the book.” Cugat called his design “Celestial Eyes.” The novel was first published with this jacket in 1925 and again in 1979 for the Scribner Library paperback edition.