[1] In the original publication of The Vegetable, or From President to Postman (1923), F. Scott Fitzgerald included the following quotation on the title page: “Any man who doesn’t want to get on in the world, to make a million dollars, and maybe even park his toothbrush in the White House, hasn’t got as much to him as a good dog has—he’s nothing more or less than a vegetable.” Fitzgerald used this quotation, which he claimed came “from a current magazine,” as a springboard for his only published play.

The Captured Shadow [5]), and his work was generally recognized for qualities that should have translated to the stage: "he wrote commercially successful stories; he knew how to frame a scene; and his dialogue, at least in his best fiction, was smart, sophisticated, evocative.

[7] Its premiere, in a single preview (Nov. 19, 1923) at Nixon's Apollo Theatre in Atlantic City, New Jersey,[8] was widely regarded as a disaster.

[9] While Fitzgerald claimed to be proud of the work, and had hoped it would succeed, the critical and public reaction to the first and only performance left the author in a deep depression, followed by a drinking binge.

As a work first published in 1923, The Vegetable entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019 and is now freely available online.