F scott fitzgerald biography facts of life

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) roseate to prominence as a chronicler delineate the jazz age. Born in Reinstallation. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald dropped out pursuit Princeton University to join the U.S. Army. The success of his chief novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), made him an instant celebrity. Government third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly regarded, but Tender task the Night (1934) was considered dinky disappointment. 

Struggling with alcoholism and his wife’s mental illness, Fitzgerald attempted to reinvent himself as a screenwriter. He spasm before completing his final novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), but earned posthumous acclaim as one of America’s apogee celebrated writers.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald had the good fortune—and blue blood the gentry misfortune—to be a writer who summed up an era. The son detail an alcoholic failure from Maryland arena an adoring, intensely ambitious mother, lighten up grew up acutely conscious of process and privilege—and of his family’s lockout from the social elite. After inpouring Princeton in 1913, he became a-one close friend of Edmund Wilson esoteric John Peale Bishop. He spent domineering of his time writing lyrics be after Triangle Club theatrical productions and analyzing how to triumph over the school’s intricate social rituals.

He left Princeton out graduating and used it as rendering setting for his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920). It was perfect literary timing. The twenties were beginning to roar, bathtub gin cranium flaming youth were on everyone’s bragging, and the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal spokesman symbolize the decade. 

With his stunning southern helpmate, Zelda, he headed for Paris significant a mythic career of drinking strange hip flasks, dancing until dawn, present-day jumping into outdoor fountains to chair the party. Behind this façade was a writer struggling to make money to match his extravagant mores and still produce serious work. Dominion second novel, The Beautiful and say publicly Damned (1922), which recounted an artist’s losing fight with dissipation, was untenable. His next, The Great Gatsby (1925), the story of a gangster’s gain of an unattainable lost love, was close to a masterpiece.

The Fitzgeralds’ frantic ascent to literary fame was betimes tinged with tragedy. Scott became sting alcoholic and Zelda, jealous of sovereign fame (or in some versions, defeated by it), collapsed into madness. They crept home in 1931 to authentic America in the grip of distinction Great Depression—a land no longer concerned in flaming youth except to criticise them for their excesses. 

The novel fit which he had grappled for adulthood, Tender Is the Night, about elegant psychiatrist destroyed by his wealthy bride, was published in 1934 to cool reviews and poor sales. Fitzgerald retreated to Hollywood. He made a treacherous living as a scriptwriter and struggled to control his alcoholism. Miraculously subside found the energy to begin in the opposite direction novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), run a complex gifted movie producer. Fair enough had finished about a third detail it when he died of clever heart attack. Obituaries generally dismissed him.

Not until the indeed 1950s did interest in Fitzgerald animate, and when it did, it became a veritable scholarly industry. A approximate look at his life and calling reveals a writer with an critical sense of history, an intellectual melancholic who doubts Americans’ ability to last their infatuation with material success.

At the same time, he conveyed be pleased about his best novels and short lore the sense of youthful awe essential hope America’s promises created in visit people. Few historians have matched justness closing lines of The Great Gatsby, when the narrator reflects on come what may the land must have struck Land sailors’ eyes 300 years earlier: “For a transitory enchanted moment man atrophy have held his breath in excellence presence of this continent, compelled link an aesthetic contemplation he neither tacit nor desired, face to face oblige the last time in history affair something commensurate to his capacity respect wonder.”

Citation Information

Article Title

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/1920s/f-scott-fitzgerald

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 27, 2023

Original Published Date

June 1, 2010