Much has been written about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, particularly their vagabond lifestyle during the Jazz Age and tumultuous relationship, marred by F. Scott’s alcoholism and Zelda’s little understood battle with mental illness.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of the 1925 classic The Great Gatsby, obviously cast a large shadow, while Zelda was viewed as the original “Flapper” (and sometimes party girl). Yet she was also an aspiring ballerina, devoted mother, writer and yearned to be taken seriously as an artist.
For the first time, her colorful, playful paper dolls have been assembled into a new book: The Paper Dolls of Zelda Fitzgerald. The book came to fruition through the efforts of Zelda’s granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan — more than eighty years after Zelda first pitched the idea to her late husband’s agent, Maxwell Perkins, who was affiliated with Scribner publishing.
“I don’t think she was in high esteem in the publishing world at the time,” Lanahan says. “She was the wife of. Everybody knew she’d had a mental illness. I don’t know how far that proposal went, if it went anywhere.”
Years later, Zelda’s only child, daughter
