The Beautiful and Damned is a 1922 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in New York City, the novel's plot follows a young artist Anthony Patch and his flapper wife Gloria Gilbert who become "wrecked on the shoals of dissipation" while partying to excess at the dawn of the hedonistic Jazz Age. As Fitzgerald's second novel, the work focuses on the swinish behavior and glittering excesses of the American idle rich in the heyday of New York's café society.

Fitzgerald modeled the characters of Anthony Patch on himself and Gloria Gilbert on his newlywed spouse Zelda Fitzgerald. The novel draws circumstantially on the early years of Fitzgeralds' tempestuous marriage following the unexpected success of the author's first novel, This Side of Paradise. At the time of their wedding in 1920, Fitzgerald claimed neither he nor Zelda loved each other, and the early years of their marriage in New York City resembled a friendship.

Having reflected upon earlier criticisms of This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald sought to improve on the form and construction of his prose in The Beautiful and Damned and to venture into a new genre of fiction altogether. He revised his second novel based on editorial suggestions from his friend Edmund Wilson and his editor Max Perkins. When reviewing the manuscript, Perkins commended the conspicuous evolution of Fitzgerald's literary craftsmanship.

Metropolitan Magazine serialized This Side of Paradise in late 1921, and Charles Scribner's Sons published the book in March 1922. Scribner's prepared an initial print run of 20,000 copies. Although not among the top ten best-selling novels of the year, the book sold well enough to warrant an additional printing of 50,000 copies. Despite the considerable sales, critics consider the work to be among Fitzgerald's weaker novels. During the final decade of his life, Fitzgerald remarked on the novel's lack of quality in a letter to his wife: "I wish The Beautiful and Damned had been a maturely written book because it was all true. We ruined ourselves—I have never honestly thought that we ruined each other."

In 1913, Anthony Patch is a 25-year-old Harvard University alumnus recently having returned from Rome and now residing in New York City. He is the presumptive heir to his dying grandfather's vast fortune. Through his friend Richard "Dick" Caramel, Anthony meets Gloria Gilbert, a beautiful flapper and "jazz baby" who is Dick's cousin. Anthony begins courting her. The couple fall madly in love, with Gloria ecstatically exclaiming: "Mother says that two souls are sometimes created together—and in love before they're born." After a whirlwind courtship, Anthony and Gloria marry.

For the first three years of their married life together, Anthony and Gloria vow to adhere to "the magnificent attitude of not giving a damn... for what they chose to do and what consequences it brought. Not to be sorry, not to lose one cry of regret, to live according to a clear code of honor toward each other, and to seek the moment's happiness as fervently and persistently as possible." Pitted against each other's selfish attitudes, Gloria and Anthony's marital bliss evaporates. Once the couple's infatuation with each other fades, they begin to see their differences do more harm than good, as well as leaving each other with unfulfilled hopes. Over time, the disappointed couple become hedonistic and cynical libertines.

When Anthony's grandfather learns of Anthony's dissipation, he disinherits him. During World War I, Anthony serves in the American Expeditionary Forces while Gloria remains home alone until his return. While in army training, Anthony has an extramarital liaison with Dot Raycroft, a lower-class Southern woman. After the Allied Powers sign an armistice with Imperial Germany in November 1918, Anthony returns to New York City and reunites with Gloria. When the struggle over the grandfather's inheritance concludes, Anthony wins his inheritance, but he has now become a hopeless alcoholic, and his wife has lost her beauty. The couple is now wealthy but morally and physically ruined.

At the end, Anthony Patch—echoing his grandfather—describes his inherited wealth as a consequence of his character rather than mere circumstance: "Only a few months before people had been urging him to give in, to submit to mediocrity... But he had known that he was justified in his way of life—and he had stuck it out staunchly... 'I showed them... It was a hard fight, but I didn't give up and I came through!"