F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

"This is a collection of historical documents – it’s the book equivalent of an hour-long documentary film that draws on a historical archive to tell you the background and context of a certain work of art. It was put together by Matthew Bruccoli, who also edited the Fitzgerald letters. For many years Bruccoli was the reigning Fitzgerald scholar and he did a great deal of spadework. He created archives and did an enormous amount of research into newspapers and primary sources. This book is a collection of various newspaper stories and the historical contexts from which The Great Gatsby emerged. There are many references in Gatsby to actual historical events and Fitzgerald uses a great many real-life people who he transforms or creates composites out of. He would very cheerfully admit this, by the way – it’s not speculation. So in a lot of his letters, he would say, ‘I based this part on the stockbroker Bob Kerr’s story’, or, ‘I based this part on Arnold Rothstein’, so we know that is what he was doing and he wasn’t trying to deceive anyone about it. It was a perfectly legitimate way to write fiction ."