Winter Dreams
"Winter Dreams" is a tragic short story by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald first published in Metropolitan magazine in December 1922 and collected in his 1926 anthology All the Sad Young Men. The plot concerns a young middle-class Midwesterner named Dexter Green who falls in love with the upper-class socialite Judy Jones. His efforts to win her fickle affections ultimately lead to disappointment.
Fitzgerald's unsuccessful courtship of socialite Ginevra King inspired the short story, and King served as his model for the selfish character of Judy Jones. During their courtship, the young writer's middle-class status prompted an intervention by Ginevra's upper-class family, and she rejected him as an unsuitable match. This rejection embittered Fitzgerald's attitude toward the wealthy, and the emotional toll contributed to his incipient alcoholism. Fitzgerald composed the story in September 1922.
Frequently anthologized, critics regard "Winter Dreams" as one of Fitzgerald's finest works for evoking "the loss of youthful illusions." Scholars place the story within the so-called "Gatsby-cluster" of Fitzgerald's canon, noting that he expanded on its themes in his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. Writing his editor Max Perkins in June 1925, Fitzgerald described the work as a "first draft of the Gatsby idea."
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