“The Offshore Pirate” is told in the third-person omniscient point-of-view, with Ardita Farnam as the focal character. The story opens on a luxury yacht off the coast of Florida in shortly after the First World War.] Lounging on deck is the 19-year-old Ardita Farnam, the wealthy heir of a family fortune. Raised by her father’s brother and his wife, she is well-educated, indolent, pretty, and scornful of the men in her social class. The object of the sea cruise, organized by her uncle, is to prevent Ardita from rendezvousing with her latest beau in Palm Beach, a man her family regards as a licentious bounder and she regards as man possessing “the courage of his own convictions.” When her uncle insists that she join a dinner party to meet the 26-year-old Toby Moreland, the son of an associate, she flippantly dismisses the offer and insists she be taken to Palm Beach. Disgusted, the uncle departs on a launch to spend the night on shore. Ardita is left on the yacht in solitude. An elaborate practical joke, organized by her uncle and Toby begins to unfold, the purpose of which is to tame the shrewish Ardita and woo her to matrimony.
As night falls, seven men in a large rowboat approach the yacht, six black men at the oars, and a white man at the helm. The rowers sing lusty songs with nonsense lyrics. “Carrots and peas/Beans on their knees/Pigs in the seas/Lucky fellows!” The white man conducts with a baton. Ardita, leaning over the rail, is astonished and intrigued by the bizarre ensemble. The white man leaps aboard and demands, pirate-like, that she surrender the vessel. Ardita is momentarily stunned by his good looks, but recovers and orders him off the yacht. Ignoring her, he and his six-man crew proceed to take possession of the ship: the yacht’s chief engineer, cook and a valet submit to the hijackers. The strange men carry aboard musical instruments and mysterious white sacks. The white man introduces himself to Ardita as Curtis Carlyle, his men the “Six Black Buddies”, all of them nightclub entertainers. The bags apparently contain loot from a Palm Beach heist. He gives Ardita an ultimatum: she can row herself to shore or remain on the yacht and accompany them on the high seas escape. Ardita, fearless and defiant, finds her predicament exciting, and remains on board.
When they get underway, she and Carlyle begin to share their personal histories and exchange philosophies on life. His narrative is that of a struggling musician, his service in the army, and his ambition to be wealthy: he plans to travel to India and become a rajah. She relates her backstory as a much sought after rich girl, pursued by men she holds in low esteem. Ardita detects a certain gravity in Carlyle’s character she finds compelling. Carlyle and his men navigate to a remote island and conceal the ship in a secluded cove so as to evade revenue cutters searching for them. While the pirates keep lookout, Ardita and Carlyle enjoy a tropical interlude for several days: she is falling in love.
An unidentified vessel is spotted near the mouth of the cove. The pirates suspect they have been discovered, and prepare to resist. Firearms are distributed. The revenue cruiser appears, mounted with six-inch cannons and machine guns. The situation appears hopeless. To Ardita’s delight, Carlyle keep’s his nerve. The revenue officers board the yacht, with Ardita’s uncle in the lead. Confronting his niece, he berates her for absconding with pirates. Flinging her arms around Carlyle, she tells her uncle to shut up. Now certain he has won Ardita’s everlasting devotion, "Carlyle" reveals that he is, in fact, Toby Moreland. He admits that he masterminded the elaborate burlesque in order to win her affection and wed her.
Unfazed, Ardita kisses Toby, and the Six Black Buddies begin to serenade them: “Time is a Thief/Gladness and grief/Cling to the leaf/As it yellows—“[3]
Publication history
The story was first published in the May 29, 1920 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, his third short story appearance in the magazine that month.[1] The story was republished in the short story collection Flappers and Philosophers.[4]
Critical appraisal
Fitzgerald’s early short fiction, as represented in Flappers and Philosophers (1920), frequently offers “authorial self-conscious” declarations.[5] Literary critic John Kuehl cites the following “pseudo-philosophical passage” from “The Offshore Pirate” as an example:
Most of us are content to exist and breed and fight for the right to do both, and the dominant idea, the foredoomed attempt to control one’s destiny, is reserved for the fortunate and unfortunate few.”[6]
As Fitzgerald was still in his youth (23-years-of-age), Kuehl suggests that such sententious pronouncements would be less intrusive if issued by the storys’ protagonists.[7]
In his annotated table of contents from Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), Fitzgerald demurred when a “well-known critic” hailed “A Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” writing: “Personally, I prefer ‘The Offshore Pirate.’”[10][11][12]
Zelda Fitzgerald was an American novelist, painter, playwright, and socialite. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, to a wealthy Southern family, she became locally famous for her beauty and high spirits. In 1920, she married writer F. Scott Fitzgerald after the popular success of his debut novel, This Side of Paradise. The novel catapulted the young couple into the public eye, and she became known in the national press as the first American flapper. Due to their wild antics and incessant partying, she and her husband became regarded in the newspapers as the enfants terribles of the Jazz Age. Alleged infidelity and bitter recriminations soon undermined their marriage. After traveling abroad to Europe, Zelda's mental health deteriorated, and she had suicidal and homicidal tendencies which required psychiatric care. Her doctors diagnosed Zelda with schizophrenia, although later posthumous diagnoses posit bipolar disorder.
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of romances with flappers. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status-seeking, and takes its title from a line of Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti.
The Beautiful and Damned is a 1922 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in New York City, the novel's plot follows a young artist Anthony Patch and his flapper wife Gloria Gilbert who become "wrecked on the shoals of dissipation" while excessively partying at the dawn of the hedonistic Jazz Age. As Fitzgerald's second novel, the work focuses upon the swinish behavior and glittering excesses of the American social elite in the heyday of New York's café society.
The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald is a compilation of 43 short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1989. It begins with a foreword by Charles Scribner II and a preface written by Bruccoli, after which the stories follow in chronological order of publication.
"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was first published in May 1920 in The Saturday Evening Post. It was Fitzgerald's first short story to achieve national prominence. The original publication featured interior illustrations by May Wilson Preston. The work later appeared in the September 1920 short story collection Flappers and Philosophers published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Flappers and Philosophers is a collection of eight works of short fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Each of the stories had originally appeared, independently, in either the Saturday Evening Post,Scribner's Magazine, or The Smart Set.
"The Cut-Glass Bowl" is a short story by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in the May 1920 issue of Scribner's Magazine, and included later that year in his first short story collection Flappers and Philosophers. The story follows the lives of a married couple, Evylyn and Harold Piper, through various difficult or tragic events that involve a cut glass bowl they received as a wedding gift. In a copy of Flappers and Philosophers which he gave to literary critic H. L. Mencken, Fitzgerald wrote that he deemed the story to be "worth reading" in contrast to others in the volume which he dismissed as either "amusing" or "trash."
"Head and Shoulders" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was his first story to be published in the Saturday Evening Post, with the help of Fitzgerald's agent, Harold Ober. The story appeared in the February 21, 1920 issue and was illustrated by Charles D. Mitchell. It later appeared in his short story collection Flappers and Philosophers.
"Winter Dreams" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that was first published in Metropolitan magazine in December 1922 and later collected in All the Sad Young Men in 1926. The plot concerns the attempts by a young man to win the affections of an upper-class woman. The story, frequently anthologized, is regarded as one of Fitzgerald's finest works "for poignantly portraying the loss of youthful illusions."
"The Ice Palace" is a modernist short story written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in The Saturday Evening Post on May 22, 1920. It is one of eight short stories originally published in Fitzgerald's first collection, Flappers and Philosophers, and is also included in the collection Babylon Revisited and Other Stories.
Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) is a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Divided into three separate parts, according to subject matter, it includes one of his better-known short stories, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". All of the stories had first appeared, independently, in either Metropolitan Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Smart Set, Collier's, the Chicago Sunday Tribune, or Vanity Fair.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
All the Sad Young Men is a collection of short fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The stories originally appeared independently in popular literary journals and were first collected in 1926 by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Taps at Reveille is a collection of 18 short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1935. It was the fourth and final volume of previously uncollected short stories Fitzgerald published in his lifetime. The volume appeared the year after his novel Tender is the Night (1934) was published. The collection includes several stories featuring autobiographical creations derived from Fitzgerald’s youth, namely Basil Duke Lee and Josephine Perry.
"First Blood" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, originally published in the April 5, 1930 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, illustrated by Harry Russell Ballinger. It was later included in his 1935 short story collection Taps at Reveille.
"The Rich Boy" is a short story by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was included in his 1926 collection All the Sad Young Men. "The Rich Boy" originally appeared in two parts, in the January and February 1926 issues of Redbook. In the January installment, the story is described on the front cover as: "A great story of today's youth by F. Scott Fitzgerald".
The Off-Shore Pirate is a 1921 American silent romantic comedy film produced and released by Metro Pictures and directed by Dallas Fitzgerald. The film was based on the short story "The Offshore Pirate" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, of no relation to the director, that was published in The Saturday Evening Post. Viola Dana and Jack Mulhall star in the film. It is not known whether the film currently survives.
“Myra Meets His Family” is a work of short fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald first appearing in The Saturday Evening Post on March 20, 1920. The story was collected in The Price Was High: Fifty Uncollected Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1979) by Harcourt, Brace & Company “Myra Meets His Family” was among the first stories accepted by The Saturday Evening Post for publication. Fitzgerald would sell the bulk of his short fiction to the Post during the next 20 years, until his death n 1940.
The Price Was High: Fifty Uncollected Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a volume of short fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald published by Harcourt Brace & Company in 1979.
“The Lees of Happiness” is a work of short fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald first appearing in The Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1920. The story was first collected in Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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