by John Kulka, Editorial Director, Library of America
Our centennial edition of The Annotated Great Gatsby, edited by James L. W. West III, has been a stupendous hit with readers and reviewers. With the continuing excitement around Gatsby’s centenary, it seems like the perfect moment to invite readers into the editorial workshop for a look at the genesis of this book and a sneak preview of what’s next with deluxe annotated classics from Library of America.
The Annotated Great Gatsby
A few years ago, as the buzz around the Gatsby centenary grew louder, we began to wonder how LOA would celebrate. Looking at my bookshelves, I noticed Martin Gardner’s lovely Annotated Alice and the gorgeous deluxe annotated editions of Jane Austen’s novels from Harvard University Press. Maybe we could do something similar for Gatsby.
Like Austen’s novels, Gatsby has a large, devoted readership. And it’s a book which has had a singular influence on American life and culture. Its imagery (the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock) and its characters—especially the mysterious Gatsby—continue to stir the imagination. (“Nobody’ll ever know America completely,” Jack Kerouac wrote, “because nobody ever knew Gatsby, I guess.”) I began to think then of illustrative possibilities: the glam couple Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, the whole Jazz Age world of the novel, and the novel’s long, rich afterlife in books, film, and fashion. Gatsby seemed to cry out for the full annotated treatment.
Sample spread from The Annotated Great Gatsby
In a lively editorial meeting we all grew excited about the possibilities. The photographs, the color illustrations, the running commentary, the glosses, the fun facts—all these features of an annotated edition encourage the reader to slow down and linger, and gain a larger appreciation of a work and the time and circumstance in which it was created. It would be a terrific resource for general readers, teachers, and students alike. (As part of our spring 2025 LOA in the Classroom campaign, we donated over a thousand volumes of The Annotated Great Gatsby to classrooms nationwide.)
An annotated edition of Gatsby could also showcase the important textual work behind LOA’s corrected text. Above all we could sample in the book’s generous margins the best of what has been thought and said about Gatsby over the past one hundred years. The ideal outside editor to undertake the project, we unanimously agreed, was James L. W. West III, the textual scholar who is establishing authoritative new texts for our ongoing Collected Writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Watch: A Look Inside the Annotated Great Gatsby
What’s next for LOA’s annotated editions? Hemingway scholar Robert W. Trogdon and our editorial staff are already hard at work on The Annotated Sun Also Rises, to be published on October 22, 2026, for the hundredth anniversary of the novel. Hemingway’s masterpiece of literary modernism presents many similar opportunities for illustrations and commentary: the glamor and excitement of 1920s Paris, Spain and bullfighting, sumptuous food and drinking, and of course the large cast of expat figures modeled on people he knew, both friends and enemies (Hemingway’s imagination seemed to require him to work very closely to real life). Using the new text of the novel we established for Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises & Other Writings 1918–1926 (LOA series #334), The Annotated Sun Also Rises will also examine the novel’s fascinating publication history.
This article originally appeared in Library of America’s Fall 2025 newsletter.
