SOURCE: Hays, Peter L. “Philippe, ‘Count of Darkness,’ and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Feminist?” In New Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald's Neglected Stories, edited by Jackson R. Bryer, pp. 291-304. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Hays argues that the four Count of Darkness stories—“The Kingdom in the Dark,” “In the Darkest Hour,” “The Count of Darkness,” and “Gods of Darkness”—reveal insights about Fitzgerald, particularly his sympathy for the feminist movement.

In April 1934 Fitzgerald began a series of four linked stories set in ninth-century France, the nucleus of a historical novel he never finished.¹ Known as the Philippe or Count of Darkness stories, they were rejected by the Saturday Evening Post and purchased somewhat grudgingly by Redbook, as a favor to Fitzgerald, and published by Redbook in October 1934 and June and August 1935; the fourth and final story was not released until after Fitzgerald's death...