Momentous parties have long provided dramatic scenes in fiction, from Natashas first ball in War and Peace to Lizzie meeting Darcy in Pride and Prejudice to J. Edgar Hoover consorting with Truman Capote in Don DeLillos The Black and White Ball.
Revelry can be revealing of character, as in Jay Gatsbys extravagant bash in F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby and the decadent partying of the jaded expats in Ernest Hemingways The Sun Also Rises. More decorous affairs can conceal profound depths, as in Katherine Mansfields The Garden Party and the parties at the centre of two modernist masterpieces, Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway and James Joyces The Dead. Glamour with a gothic twist makes an appearance here in the fancy dress ball at Manderley from Daphne Du Mauriers Rebecca and in Edgar Allan Poes The Masque of the Red Death, at which Death himself is a guest.
But there is room on this dance floor for humour as well, in Evelyn Waughs Bella Fleace Gave a Party, Dorothy Parkers Arrangement in Black & White, Saki's A Boar Pig and Vladimir Nabokovs Pnin Gives a Party. All kinds of literary greats consort in this festive gathering, a perfect gift for readers and partygoers alike.
