ABSTRACT
The weeklong series of events that came to be memorialized as the Great Crash began toward the close of trading on Wednesday, 23rd October, when, following weeks of price declines amid signs of slowing in key sectors of the economy, the New York Stock Exchange was rocked by a sudden sell-off. Looking back in the immediate aftermath of the crash, the journalist Garet Garrett ruefully contemplated the 'New Era' ethos that had been much promulgated during the boom years. The Great Crash and the Great Depression that followed it – brought about, at least in part, precisely by the ebbing of popular confidence in what Asch calls 'eventual success' – would indeed see joblessness and poverty balloon. F. Scott Fitzgerald was clear in his preliminary notes that the novel's main narrative would conclude in July 1929, three months prior to the Wall Street Crash, but the published text is equally clear in drawing events to a close in July 1930.
