The Lasting Mystery of the Dustjacket of The Great Gatsby

It is probably the most recognized dustjacket of any American novel. However, little is known about how it came to be created or when it was shown to Fitzgerald. Nowhere in the correspondence about the dustjacket between

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins does either mention the artist, Francis Cugat, by name. Cugat seems to have been familiar with the setting and themes of the novel, yet neither a meeting nor correspondence with Fitzgerald is documented.

Dustjackets were a relatively new item in the 1920s. Prior to the 1900s, book covers would have a decorative design or artwork. Dustjackets were simply “wraps” to protect the book in transit and meant to be discarded. The artwork moved to the dustjacket as they were cheaper to produce. Slowly the artwork became more interesting and eyecatching, which would help with sales. Perhaps Cugat decided to experiment with this new medium, but how did it get to Scribner’s? Cugat never created art for Scribner's again nor any other dustjacket for that matter. Did Cugat have some friend in Scribner’s art department to whom we are forever indebted? After one hundred years the mystery continues.

The artist Francis Cugat

Francis Cugat (full name is Coradal-Cugat) was the brother of Xavier Cugat, the Latin bandleader. Born in Spain in 1892, Francis moved with his family to Havana, Cuba at age twelve. Francis studied painting while Xavier studied music. Eventually Cugat moved to New York and found a position at Vitagraph Motion Picture Studios in Brooklyn. He met and married Ruth Wadler (1898-1973) who was a watercolorist. Cugat moved to California when he was offered the position of art director at United Artists. He was there from 1920-1924. In 1924, he made a visit to Chicago, and during this time he created a series of posters for the Chicago Opera performers. These were similar in style to The Great Gatsby dustjacket and an example of Art Deco style.

The final dustjacket was executed in gouache, but it was preceded by the sequence of preparatory sketches so one can trace the development of Cugat’s idea from beginning to end. Cugat died in Westport, Connecticut, on July 13, 1981.

Francis Cugat, 1917 (photographer unknown)

The discovery of preparatory sketches for the dust jacket art

In 1990, Matthew J. Bruccoli*, the world’s leading expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald and author of  the definitive Fitzgerald biography Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, mentioned in a seminar class that almost nothing was known about Cugat and the creation of the dustjacket. A student in the course, Martha Alston, shared this with her uncle and aunt, Harry and Evelyn Kilby. They located a group of Cugat paintings in the collection of Delaware art-restorer Roy Blankenship. Bruccoli acquired the Gatsby jacket sketches from him. They and Cugat’s own copy of the jacket painting are part of the Arlyn Bruccoli Collection at the University of South Carolina.

These eight preliminary artworks complicate rather than clarify. Perhaps it was just coincidence, but it would seem that Cugat knew something about the novel’s plot or at least location as he includes trains, cityscape, and what seems like Coney Island in these sketches. He slowly develops and enlarges the floating face. Did Fitzgerald see one of these sketches or only the finished version?

The Perkins-Fitzgerald Correspondence

From April 1924 until the book was published a year later, Fitzgerald and his editor, Maxwell Perkins, discussed the dustjacket and title. Perkins did not like the original title “Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires” nor subsequent ones of Trimalchio in West Egg or Trimalchio. Fitzgerald never liked the final title. Now living in Europe, Fitzgerald wrote in August, “For Christ’s sake don’t give anyone the jacket you’re saving for me. I’ve written it into the book.”

So when did Fitzgerald see the artwork? Was it something that was shown to him during an in-person meeting? Which version(s) did he see? It was highly unusual at this time for a dustjacket to precede the finished book. It is also unclear what he had “written into the book.”

Some believe that Fitzgerald was referring to the Dr. T.J. Eckleburg billboard, as both hover above and lack a nose. This is reinforced in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Hemingway recalls seeing the cover and thought it “garish,” but says that Fitzgerald’s explanation was “it had to do with a billboard along a highway.” He also said that Fitzgerald didn’t like the cover which we know was untrue. Furthermore, A Moveable Feast was published posthumously in 1964 and was taken from Hemingway's memories about these 1920s events 30-40 years after they occurred. The conversation cannot be trusted. Bruccoli believed that Dr. T.J. Eckleburg was not based on the cover but rather on T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” which Fitzgerald greatly admired.

It is very likely that the image instead references Daisy, a heavenly creature hanging over Gatsby and the novel. Cugat’s face is female with colored carnival lights behind. This does not look like the billboard in the Valley of Ashes. Perhaps Fitzgerald meant this passage was what he had written into the novel – “Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms.” However, this small passage would not seem to warrant such a strong fear of losing the cover.

So perhaps both were inspired by the artwork – one set of eyes represents the rich, beautiful world while the other represents the rundown world of the Valley of Ashes – and hearken back to the original title.

In November, Perkins wrote, “[A]s good as the wrap always seemed, it now seems a masterpiece for his book.” Fitzgerald was equally pleased and wrote in April 2025, “The cover (jacket) came too and is a delight. Zelda is mad about it.” In May, Fitzgerald received his copy and playfully wrote that he “thought the new jacket was great.” Why did Fitzgerald use the world new? It indicates that this was a later version than the version(s) he had originally seen. In Cugat’s final painting, the female celestial eyes enclose reclining nudes and her streaming tear is green-like the light “that burns all night” at the end of her dock.

The sketches seem to indicate that Cugat worked through some ideas and ones that are clearly in the novel. He starts with two drawings of a train passing through a deserted depot amidst a bleak, grey landscape with distant hills. Over this ashen scene float a series of sad, feminine eyes and mouths. Cugat then developed the weeping eye and added architectural changes including the New York skyline. After that he experimented with shooting stars, geometrical motifs, and a Ferris wheel.

Could Perkins have shared the manuscript with Cugat that led to a new and final version or did these sketches all precede the jacket that Fitzgerald saw before leaving for Europe in April 1924? The payment card in the Scribner art files state that Cugat was paid $100 for one jacket. There is no reference to an earlier version. No correspondence or recorded meetings with Cugat exist to offer any clarification.

Mia’s acquisition of The Great Gatsby - by Lori Williamson

When we had the idea to do an exhibition of 1920s art to pair with centennial celebrations of the novel, we thought sharing the story of the Cugat painting was essential to demonstrate the intersection between visual arts and literature. Princeton University Libraries holds both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s papers and as well, the papers of Scribner’s, his publisher. The book in dust jacket;  the specific letter from Fitzgerald to his editor Max Perkins regarding the painting; and the painting itself were all requested for a loan. The Cugat painting is too fragile to travel and perhaps lucky to have survived at all as Charles Scribner III’s cousin, George Schieffelin, saved it when he discovered it in a bin of publishing ‘dead matter.’ However, the excellent first edition with dust jacket together with the letter in Fitzgerald’s own hand tell the story just as well. We are so appreciative of this loan and how it shares this story with our visitors!

“Gatsby at 100”

Please enjoy this opportunity to look at the dustjacket and letter on display and draw your own conclusions. The exhibit runs through March 22, 2026 in galleries 315 and 316.

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*The father of the writer of this article. My father purchased his first copy of The Great Gatsby in dustjacket around 1960. As a graduate student, the price of $35 was steep, so he bought it in installments of $5 over 7 weeks.

Much of the information in this article comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s’ The Great Gatsby: A Documentary Volume, 2000, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Dictionary of Literary Biography: Volume 219) and specifically the entry Celestial Eyes, From Metamorphosis to Masterpiece by Charles Scribner III.

More information comes from an art booklet for a 1978 exhibit of Cugat paintings.