Image to come: a 1920s Long Island scene from a public-domain photograph.
Trimalchio in West Egg
“Did The Great Gatsby always have that title?”
F. Scott Fitzgerald was never happy with the title of his most famous novel. While he worked on it he tried out a whole string of alternatives:
- Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires
- Trimalchio in West Egg
- On the Road to West Egg
- Gold-Hatted Gatsby
- The High-Bouncing Lover
- Under the Red, White and Blue
Trimalchio was a vulgar, wealthy party-giver in the Satyricon, a satirical Roman story from the first century. The comparison with Gatsby is clever, but Fitzgerald’s publishers worried that American readers would neither recognise the reference nor know how to pronounce it.
His editor, Maxwell Perkins, steered the book through to print as The Great Gatsby. Even so, three weeks before publication Fitzgerald asked to change it to Under the Red, White and Blue. It was too late. The novel came out on 10 April 1925 with the title we know.
An early version of the book was later published under the title Trimalchio, so readers today can see the road not taken.
Look closer: George Orwell also hesitated between two titles, and the publisher helped tip the balance.