F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, the namesake and second cousin three times removed of the author of the National Anthem. Fitzgerald’s given names indicate his parents’ pride in his father’s ancestry. His father, Edward, is from Maryland. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. Both were Catholics.
Fitzgerald attended the St. Paul Academy; his first writing to appear in print was a detective story in the school newspaper when he was thirteen. During 1911-1913 he attended the Newman School, a Catholic prep school in New Jersey, where he met Father Sigourney Fay, who encouraged his ambitions for personal distinction and achievement. Fitzgerald neglected his studies for his literary apprenticeship. He wrote scripts and lyrics for the Princeton Triangle Club musicals and was a contributor to the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and the Nassau Literary Magazine. On academic probation and unlikely to graduate, Fitzgerald joined the army in 1917 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. Convinced that he would die in the war, he rapidly wrote a novel, “The Romantic Egotist”; the letter of rejection from Charles Scribner’s Sons praised the novel’s originality and asked that it be resubmitted when revised. In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. The war ended just before he was to be sent overseas; after his discharge in 1919 he went to New York City to seek his fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda broke their engagement.
Fitzgerald quit his job in July 1919 and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel as This Side of Paradise. It was accepted by Scribners in September. The publication of This Side of Paradise on March 26, 1920, made the
twenty-four-year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. After a exciting summer in Westport, Connecticut, the Fitzgeralds took an apartment in New York City; there he wrote his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned. When Zelda Fitzgerald became pregnant they took their first trip to Europe in 1921 and then settled inSt. Paul for the birth of their only child, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, who was born in October 1921.
Literary opinion makers were reluctant to give Fitzgerald full marks as a serious craftsman. His reputation as a drinker made him appear as an irresponsible writer; but he was a thorough reviser his works went through
layers of drafts. Seeking peace for his work the Fitzgeralds went to France in the spring of 1924 . He wrote The Great Gatsby during the summer and fall in Valescure near St. Raphael, but the marriage was damaged by Zelda’s involvement with a French naval pilot. The extent of the affair is not known.
twenty-four-year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. After a exciting summer in Westport, Connecticut, the Fitzgeralds took an apartment in New York City; there he wrote his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned. When Zelda Fitzgerald became pregnant they took their first trip to Europe in 1921 and then settled inSt. Paul for the birth of their only child, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, who was born in October 1921.
Literary opinion makers were reluctant to give Fitzgerald full marks as a serious craftsman. His reputation as a drinker made him appear as an irresponsible writer; but he was a thorough reviser his works went through
layers of drafts. Seeking peace for his work the Fitzgeralds went to France in the spring of 1924 . He wrote The Great Gatsby during the summer and fall in Valescure near St. Raphael, but the marriage was damaged by Zelda’s involvement with a French naval pilot. The extent of the affair is not known.
The Fitzgeralds spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Rome, where he revised The Great Gatsby; they were headed to Paris when the novel was published in
April. The Great Gatsby marked a great advance in Fitzgerald’s technique. Fitzgerald’s achievement received critical praise, but sales of Gatsby were very
low, though the stage and movie rights brought additional income.
The Fitzgeralds returned to America to escape the distractions of France. The Fitzgeralds returned to France in the spring of 1929, where Zelda’s intense
ballet work damaged her health and contributed to the couple’s estrangement. In April 1930 she suffered her first breakdown. She was treated at Prangins clinic in Switzerland until September 1931, while Fitzgerald lived in Swiss hotels. Work on the novel was again suspended as he wrote short stories to pay for psychiatric treatment. Fitzgerald was not among the highest-paid writers of his time; his novels earned comparatively little, and most of his income came from 160 magazine stories. During the 1920s his income from all sources came to under $25,000 a year good money, but not a fortune by any means. Scott and Zelda spent money faster than he earned it; the author who wrote about the effects of money on character was unable to manage his own finances.
In 1932, while a patient at Johns Hopkins, Zelda Fitzgerald rapidly wrote Save Me the Waltz. Her autobiographical novel created even more bitterness between the Fitzgeralds. Fitzgerald completed his fourth novel, Tender Is the Night. Published in 1934, his most ambitious novel was a commercial failure, and its merits were matters of critical dispute. Set in France during the 1920s, Tender Is the Night examines the deterioration of Dick Diver, a brilliant American psychiatrist, during the course of his marriage to a wealthy mental patient. In 1936 drunk, in debt, and unable to write commercial stories, he lived in hotels in the region near Asheville, North Carolina, where in 1936 Zelda Fitzgerald entered Highland Hospital. After Baltimore Fitzgerald did not maintain a home for Scottie. When she was fourteen she went to boarding school, and the Obers became her surrogate family.
April. The Great Gatsby marked a great advance in Fitzgerald’s technique. Fitzgerald’s achievement received critical praise, but sales of Gatsby were very
low, though the stage and movie rights brought additional income.
The Fitzgeralds returned to America to escape the distractions of France. The Fitzgeralds returned to France in the spring of 1929, where Zelda’s intense
ballet work damaged her health and contributed to the couple’s estrangement. In April 1930 she suffered her first breakdown. She was treated at Prangins clinic in Switzerland until September 1931, while Fitzgerald lived in Swiss hotels. Work on the novel was again suspended as he wrote short stories to pay for psychiatric treatment. Fitzgerald was not among the highest-paid writers of his time; his novels earned comparatively little, and most of his income came from 160 magazine stories. During the 1920s his income from all sources came to under $25,000 a year good money, but not a fortune by any means. Scott and Zelda spent money faster than he earned it; the author who wrote about the effects of money on character was unable to manage his own finances.
In 1932, while a patient at Johns Hopkins, Zelda Fitzgerald rapidly wrote Save Me the Waltz. Her autobiographical novel created even more bitterness between the Fitzgeralds. Fitzgerald completed his fourth novel, Tender Is the Night. Published in 1934, his most ambitious novel was a commercial failure, and its merits were matters of critical dispute. Set in France during the 1920s, Tender Is the Night examines the deterioration of Dick Diver, a brilliant American psychiatrist, during the course of his marriage to a wealthy mental patient. In 1936 drunk, in debt, and unable to write commercial stories, he lived in hotels in the region near Asheville, North Carolina, where in 1936 Zelda Fitzgerald entered Highland Hospital. After Baltimore Fitzgerald did not maintain a home for Scottie. When she was fourteen she went to boarding school, and the Obers became her surrogate family.
Fitzgerald went to Hollywood alone in the summer of 1937 with a six-month Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer screenwriting contract at $1,000 a week. Fitzgerald paid off most of his debts, he was unable to save. His trips East to visit his wife were bad. In California Fitzgerald fell in love with movie columnist Sheilah Graham. Their relationship survived despite his drinking sprees. He began his Hollywood novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, in 1939 and had written more than half of a working draft when he died of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment on December 21, 1940. Zelda Fitzgerald died at a fire in Highland Hospital in 1948.