The Beautiful and Damned tells the story of Anthony Patch, a 1910s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune, and his courtship and relationship with his wife Gloria Gilbert. It describes his brief service in the Army during World War I, and the couple's post-war partying life in New York, and his later alcoholism. The novel explores and portrays New York café society and the American Eastern elite during the Jazz Age before and after «the Great War» and in the early 1920s.
