The Paper Dolls of Zelda Fitzgerald

A beautifully designed, full-color collection of paper dolls created by Zelda Fitzgerald, lovingly compiled by her granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald has long been an American cultural icon. A Southern belle turned flapper, Zelda was talented in dance, painting, and writing but lived in the shadow of her writer husband F. Scott Fitzgerald’s success.

The golden couple of the Jazz Age, Zelda and her husband moved around—from hotels to rented villas to apartments in Paris—and Zelda always brought along her paints. Few people know she painted at all, and fewer still know she made paper dolls. But throughout her life, Zelda created dolls, whenever she could, in private. By design, paper dolls are delicate, fragile, and destined for destruction at the hands of children. Zelda’s dolls began as playthings for her daughter, Scottie, born in 1921. Fortunately, Zelda continued to make figures after Scottie outgrew them, first of their family and then of storybook characters—lavish, graceful, bold figures.

These unique characters were a portable troupe, a colorful paper caravan that travelled inside her luggage. Zelda chose subjects she relished: society figures of the French Court, or Red Riding Hood’s predatory wolf, as vivacious as the girl. Whether they are cardinals, kings, or bears, the dolls are fashionably attired in ball gowns, armor, and capes.

A gorgeous and unique keepsake and a perfect gift for book and art lovers, this delightful collection of Zelda’s paper dolls offers an intimate peek into the life of one of the Lost Generation’s most fascinating creative artists.

Eleanor Lanahan attended Sarah Lawrence College and the Rhode Island School of Design. After twenty years of commercial illustration and for children’s books under the married name Eleanor Hazard, she illustrated The Big Green Book by Madeleine Kunin and Marilyn Stout. As Eleanor Lanahan, she wrote the books Scottie, The Daughter of... and Zelda, An Illustrated Life, as well as animated the movies The Naked Hitch-Hiker and One Alcoholic to Another. Lanahan lives in Vermont.