The Matthew J. & Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Matthew J. & Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald constitutes the most comprehensive research collection for the study and teaching of Fitzgerald, those associated with him, and his times.

Initiated by Dr. Matthew J. Bruccoli as a student in the 1950s, the collection was built in subsequent decades with the encouragement of his wife, Arlyn, and of Fitzgerald's daughter, Scottie. In 1994, the Bruccolis committed their collection to USC's Rare Books and Special Collections by way of a multi-year gift-purchase agreement. Over the next 20 plus years, Dr. and Mrs. Bruccoli have donated additional material to this and other special collections held by the Irvin Department.

Major components of the collection at the time of the original transfer

Books: more than 4,400 books and periodical titles by and about F. Scott Fitzgerald, including every printing of every Fitzgerald book in the English language

Manuscripts and proofs: the only unrevised galley proofs for Fitzgerald's Trimalchio (subsequently rewritten as The Great Gatsby), the galley proofs for the first serial installment of Tender Is the Night and revised typescripts of "The Swimmers," "The Count of Darkness," and "The Kingdom in the Dark," together with Fitzgerald's pocket notebook for The Love of the Last Tycoon

Letters: over 100 letters, including letters to his early mentor Shane Leslie; his editor, Maxwell Perkins; his agent, Harold Ober; his wife, Zelda; and his daughter, Scottie

Inscriptions: more than 40 books inscribed by Fitzgerald as well as books inscribed to him by such authors as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway

Juvenilia and Princetoniana: runs of the school and Princeton magazines for which he wrote, acting scripts for the three Triangle Club shows he wrote at Princeton and Princeton yearbooks

Photos and memorabilia, including the only photo of Hemingway inscribed to Fitzgerald, the engraved silver flask that Zelda and her friends gave him in October 1918 when he was scheduled to embark for France, and his briefcase

Writings by Zelda Fitzgerald, including manuscript material and publications by and about her

Materials on Fitzgerald's friends and associates: satellite collections for Ernest Hemingway, Ring Lardner, Edmund Wilson, Budd Schulberg, Sheilah Graham, Donald Ogden Stewart, the House of Scribner, and other Scribners authors

The Bruccoli Collection today

Dr. and Mrs. Bruccoli and the Library continued building the F. Scott Fitzgerald Collection over the years by gift and purchase. Significant items acquired since 1994 include:

Additional Fitzgerald letters, including a previously unknown letter of April 1924 describing his "third novel, just completed" (The Great Gatsby), and a 1925 letter from Paris by Ernest Hemingway that claims he is giving Fitzgerald boxing lessons

Three paintings and a wooden plate painted by Zelda Fitzgerald, donated by Arlyn Bruccoli

Inscribed books, including the only known book inscribed both by Scott and Zelda (to her psychiatrist), a copy of Tender Is the Night inscribed to "Miss Television," and a copy of Goodbye to All That signed by Fitzgerald as "Robert Graves"

Books from Fitzgerald's library, including his copy of Kipling's poems with annotations (purchased by an anonymous donor)

Memorabilia, including Fitzgerald's Newman School medals and the set of stereoscopic slides of World War I battlefields that he purchased in Paris in the 1920s

File copies of Fitzgerald's books from the Harold Ober Agency (gift of an anonymous donor)

Fitzgerald's contracts with his publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, from his first novel, This Side of Paradise onwards

Fitzgerald's tax returns, the record of Fitzgerald's work as a professional author as documented in his tax returns (federal and state), from 1920 - 40

Scottie Fitzgerald material: extensive holdings related to her work with Professor Bruccoli on Fitzgerald projects