In the summer of 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, spent their honeymoon in Westport, Connecticut.
It was there, in the sleepy town 50 miles northeast of New York City, that F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly found inspiration for The Great Gatsby.
The couple spent five months in a modest cottage, which was next door to multi-millionaire F.E. Lewis, the mysterious man and frequent party host that resembles Jay Gatsby’s character.
F.E. Lewis mansion, which abutted the property that F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived on in Westport, CT in 1920.
The Fitzgerald’s formative summer is chronicled in Richard Webb Jr.’s new book, Boats Against the Current. Webb grew up just down the street from the cottage 40 years after the Fitzgerald’s left, sparking his interest in the story.
When Westport resident Barbara Probst Solomon wrote an article for The New Yorker that challenged the long-held belief that the novel was set on Long Island, Webb began to investigate and found The Great Gatsby‘s ties to Westport.
However, not everyone agrees on the particulars. Alden Bryan, the grandson of Lewis, told The New York Times that “Gatsby was a criminal, my grandfather was not!”
While the connections between Lewis and Gatsby are not direct, it’s likely that F. Scott’s stay in Westport helped spark ideas for the legendary novel.