THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 novel, is heavily based on his own troubled marriage as he describes the moral, physical, and financial decline of a beautiful and gifted couple. Anthony and Gloria Patch seem made for each other, and their idyllic relationship is enhanced by their expectations of inheriting Anthony's grandfather's millions. As they live their idle dissatisfied lives, waiting for the money to come their way, Gloria's selfishness and Anthony's alcoholism gradually and irrevocably corrode their feelings for each other. Fitzgerald's second novel is a scathing critique of the moneyed class to which he aspired but that was always, tantalizingly, just out of his reach. One of his saddest, THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED is also one of his most beautifully written books.