Zelda persuades Scott to take her to Rome to escape the winter. They stay at Hotel des Princes in the Piazza di Spagna, where Scott revises The Great Gatsby galleys. Scott gets locked up in jail one night after getting into a fight with a taxi driver and a policeman.
Scott writes to Maxwell Perkins about Ernest Hemingway (whom he had yet to meet) and advises Perkins that he had read some of Hemingway’s works and recommended that Perkins sign him up stating “He’s the real thing.”
The Fitzgeralds drive south to Naples in search of sun. Then on to Sorrento.
They move on to Capri, where Scott wanted to see Compton Mackenzie who had a villa on the island. They stay at the Hotel Tiberio.
Scott and Zelda have their car shipped from Naples to Marseilles. They drive from Marseilles to Lyon. They get so fed up with driving that they leave their car in Lyon and catch the train back to Paris.
The publication of The Great Gatsby. It received excellent reviews. Sales at $2.00 per copy however were sluggish. After the first printing of 20,870 there was a second printing of 3,000 in August. (Some copies of the second printing were in Scribner's warehouse when Scott died.)
The Fitzgeralds rent a walk-up apartment on the Right Bank at 14 rue de Tilsitt.
Scott meets Ernest Hemingway in The Dingo American Bar and Restaurant in rue Delambre, on the Left Bank, behind the Rotonde. The bar is frequented by the sporting set who sparred and exercised in a nearby gym.