In the early 20s, McCall’s asked Zelda Fitzgerald to write on essay on the super flapper. The article was never published and long thought lost. But it has now been rediscovered…

I suppose I should begin by thanking McCall’s for asking me to write about a creature they call “The Super Flapper.” It is rather funny to be considered an expert on something simply by being that thing in the eyes of other people. I’ve always thought of myself as myself. But if flapperdom is about anything, it’s making everything you can from being young and beautiful. People usually think I am more than I am or less than I am. It’s amusing to fool them, then watch them be surprised.

However, I have been called upon to explain the flapper and so I shall because they have offered $300 for the piece and I would very much like $300. The editor asked me: what are flappers like? What do they do all day? Whatever they please, is the short answer. So long as it isn’t boring.

But what do you do, Mrs. Fitzgerald, asked the editor. That’s what our readers want to know.

Well, here are some of the things I have done recently, in no very particular order.

I married a writer. You may have heard of him. I believe he calls himself F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I took $100 from Dorothy Parker. She wasn’t using it at the time, so why not?

I asked Alex McKaig to shave my neck because I wanted the line of my hair sharp and clear. Once I asked him to kiss me in the taxi. He said no, because of Scott. But that’s not it.

I have met a lot of people. I rode on a ferris wheel with John Dos Passos. We talked a great deal, but I’m not sure he understood.

I have spent time in Connecticut where they have no biscuits and no peaches to go with them even if they did. But you can swim which is marvelous. That’s my ideal day: peaches for breakfast, then golf, then a swim. A long lazy spell, then a big, brilliant gathering in the evening.

I went to Europe and did not think much of it. Scott said it is now a place of antiquarian interest only and we shouldn’t have bothered saving it during the war. But we’ll try it again some time.

The truth is, the flapper, the true, genuine article, is just about dead. She’s been smothered by hundreds of college girls and debutantes who are bobbing their hair and kissing boys and trying to top the original order of Flappers in their audacity. There is nothing spontaneous in it. Now it is simply a game. Still, I hope they play it well for all it’s worth.

Speaking of which, may I have my $300?

Author’s note: Zelda Fitzgerald did all the things listed here. The opinions and many of the words are her own.

The Girl in the Green Dress
Genre: Historical Mystery
Release: September 2025
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

From the author of The Lindbergh Nanny comes an evocative mystery about the 1920 murder of the gambler Joseph Elwell, featuring New Yorker writer Morris Markey and Zelda Fitzgerald.

New York, 1920.

Zelda Fitzgerald is bored, bored, bored. Although she’s newly married to the hottest writer in America, and one half of the literary scene’s “it” couple, Zelda is at loose ends while Scott works on his next novel, The Beautiful and the Damned.

Meanwhile, Atlanta journalist Morris Markey has arrived in New York and is lost in every way possible. Recently returned from the war and without connections, he hovers at the edge of the city’s revels, unable to hear the secrets that might give him his first big story.

When notorious man-about-town Joseph Elwell is found shot through the head in his swanky townhouse, the fortunes the two southerners collide when they realize they were both among the last to see him alive. Zelda encountered Elwell at the scandalous Midnight Frolic revue on the night of his death, and Markey saw him just hours before with a ravishing mystery woman dressed in green. Markey has his story. Zelda has her next adventure.

As they investigate which of Elwell’s many lovers―or possibly an enraged husband―would have wanted the dapper society man dead, Zelda sweeps Markey into her New York, the heady, gaudy Jazz Age of excess and abandon, as the lost generation takes its first giddy steps into a decade-long spree. Everyone has come to do something, the more scandalous the better; Zelda is hungry for love and sensation, Markey desperate for success and recognition. As they each follow these ultimately dangerous desires, the pair close in on what really happened that night―and hunt for the elusive girl in the green dress who may hold the truth.

Based on the real story of the unsolved deaths of Joseph Elwell and New Yorker writer Morris Markey, Mariah Fredericks’s new novel is a glittering homage to the dawn of the Jazz Age, as well as a deft and searing portrait of the dark side of fame.

About the author
Mariah Fredericks was born, raised, and still lives in New York City. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in history. She is the author of the Jane Prescott mystery series, which has twice been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. The Lindbergh Nanny, her first standalone novel, was nominated for the Agatha and Anthony Awards. Her most recent novel is The Wharton Plot, which was named one of Library Journal’s Best Crime Novels of the Year. Her latest book, The Girl in the Green Dress, was published in September.