Matthew J. Bruccoli, whose biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald and outpouring of scholarly essays and critical editions made him the dean of Fitzgerald studies in the United States, died at his home in Columbia, S.C., on Wednesday. He was 76.
The cause was a glioma, a tumor of the brainstem, said his wife, Arlyn.
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In the publish-or-perish world of academia, Mr. Bruccoli set a daunting example. In addition to his voluminous work on Fitzgerald and Hemingway, he wrote biographies of John O'Hara, James Gould Cozzens and Ross Macdonald, compiled descriptive bibliographies of several authors and edited the letters and notebooks of many others, including Vladimir Nabokov, whose literature courses he took at Cornell.
"He endeared himself to Nabokov by saying that his reason for taking the course was, 'I like stories,' " his wife said. "Nabokov thought that was the perfect answer." With Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist's son, Mr. Bruccoli edited "Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters, 1940-1977," published in 1989.