Tarquin of Cheapside

Tarquin of Cheapside – one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald «Tales of the Jazz Age» (1922). Written almost six years before being added to this collection, this story was written in Fitzgerald's undergraduate days at Princeton. Considerably revised, it was published in the «Smart Set» in 1921. At the time of its conception Fitzgerald had wanted to be a poet, and was interested in the ring of every phrase. This short story is told in narrative style. As the story opens the invisible narrator and reader are in the home of Wessel Caster. Wessel is reading The Faerie Queen when he is suddenly disturbed by frantic po…