The Love of the Last Tycoon was left in draft form at the time of Fitzgerald's death. After his notes were edited by the literary critic Edmund Wilson, the novel was published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon, but The Love of the Last Tycoon is thought to have been his preferred title. An exposé of the Hollywood studio system in its heyday, this edition reproduces Fitzgerald's unfinished manuscript, pairing it with his essay The Crack-Up, which tells the story of his sudden descent at the age of thirty-nine from a life of success and glamour to one of emptiness and despair, and his determined recovery.