‘The Great Gatsby’ turns 100

The Lift WDIO
Updated: April 8, 2025 - 10:48 PM
Published: April 8, 2025 - 9:45 PM
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Celebrating 100 Years of ‘The Great Gatsby’

The Great Gatsby, published on April 10, 1925, is approaching its centennial anniversary, and professors Dr. Deborah Schlacks and Dr. Joel Sipress from the University of Wisconsin-Superior are commemorating this milestone. Known as a significant novel of the American dream, Gatsby critiques enduring social issues like class inequality that resonate today. Initially unpopular, the book sold fewer than 20,000 copies during writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's lifetime but has since sold over 30 million copies. The professors will discuss these themes and their relevance at a public event at the university library, featuring a Q&A session and refreshments.

On Thursday, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald will turn 100. It was published on April 10, 1925.

The University of Wisconsin-Superior will mark the anniversary with a 6 p.m. discussion at the Dan Hill Library on campus. Professor Emeritus of English Deborah Schlacks and Professor of History Joel Sipress will lead it.

“It has been known for a long time as the novel of the American Dream,” Dr. Schlacks said. “But beyond that … it’s so almost prophetic, it would seem. It echoes issues that were very much on people’s minds in 1925, and a lot of those are still on our minds today.”

What strikes Sipress is its timeless nature.

“It really in many ways is a social critique, and it’s a social critique that represented people’s discomfort with a kind of social inequalities, the class divide, in a country that was newly industrialized,” Dr. Sipress said. “And those issues are with us today. And when I just recently reread it, I was just really struck by how you could take away the details and you could set it today, and you could tell the same story.”

Thursday’s discussion will include a Q&A. It is free and open to the public.