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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald ( September 24, 1896- December 21, 1940), was a Jazz Age novelist.
Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th Century. The self-styled spokesman of the " Lost Generation" -- the Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I -- crafted five novels and dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth, despair, and age with remarkable emotional honesty. His heroes -- handsome, confident, and doomed -- blaze brilliantly before exploding ("Show me a hero," he once said, "and I will write you a tragedy"), and his heroines are beautiful and intricate.
He was named for his relative Francis Scott Key, but commonly known as simply Scott. Scott Fitzgerald attended Saint Paul Academy and Summit School in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1908-1911. He then attended Newman School , a prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1911-12. He entered Princeton University in 1913 as a member of the Class of 1917 and became friends with the future critics and writers Edmund WilsonEdmund Wilson ( May 8, 1895 June 12 1972) was an American writer, noted chiefly for his literary criticism. He was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, and educated at Princeton. He began his writing career as a reporter for the New York Sun and served in the ar '16 and John Peale Bishop '17. Saddled with academic difficulties throughout his three-year career at the university, Fitzgerald dropped out in 1917 to enlist in the United States Army when America entered World War I. However, the war ended shortly thereafter, and he was discharged without having been shipped to Europe.
Certain he was to die in the war and wanting to leave a literary legacy, Fitzgerald had quickly written a novel entitled The Romantic Egotist while in officer training at Camp Taylor, Louisville, KentuckyThis article is about the Kentucky city. For other uses see Louisville (disambiguation). Louisville is Kentucky's largest city and the 16th largest city of the United States. The City of Louisville was founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark and is named a, and Camp Sheridan, AlabamaAlabama is a state located in the southern United States; the population of Alabama is 4,447,100 as of 2000. The USS Alabama and CSS Alabama were named in honor of this state. History Main article: History of Alabama Among Native American people once livi. The novel was praised but rejected by an editor at the publisher to which he submitted it, Charles Scribner's Sons in New York.
While at Camp Sheridan, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre ( 19001900 is the common year starting on Monday. see link for calendar) For the film, see 1900 (film). Events January January 1 Nigeria becomes British protectorate January 2 John Hay announces the Open Door Policy to promote trade with China. January 2 Chicag- 19481948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). Events January January 1 Nationalisation of UK railways to form British Railways. Arab militants lay siege to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. First day of the Ital), the "top girl," in Fitzgerald's words, of Montgomery, Alabama, youth society. The two were engaged in 1919 and Fitzgerald moved into an apartment at 200 Claremont Avenue in New York City to try to lay a foundation for his life with Zelda. Working at an advertising firm and writing short stories, Fitzgerald was unable to convince Zelda that he would be able to support her. She broke off the engagement and Fitzgerald returned to his parents' house in St. Paul to revise The Romantic Egotist. Recast as This Side of Paradise , it was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919, and Zelda and Scott resumed their engagement. It was published on March 26, 1920, and became one of the most popular books of the year, defining the flapper generation. The next week, Scott and Zelda were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their daughter and only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921.
Although Fitzgerald's passion lay in writing novels, they never sold well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he and Zelda adopted as New York celebrities. To support this lifestyle, he turned to writing short stories for such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Magazine, and Esquire magazine, and sold movie rights of his stories and novels to Hollywood studios. He was constantly in financial trouble and often required loans from his literary agent, Harold Ober, and his editor at Scribner's , Maxwell Perkins.
The 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned , published in 1922, represents an impressive development over the comparatively immature This Side of Paradise. The Great Gatsby, which many consider his masterpiece, was published in 1925. Fitzgerald made several famous excursions to Europe, notably Paris and the French Riviera during the 20s, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate community in Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway.
Fitzgerald began working on his fourth novel during the late 1920s but was sidetracked by financial difficulties that necessitated his writing commercial short stories, and the schizophrenia that struck Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald in 1930. Her emotional health remained fragile for the rest of her life. In 1932, she was hospitalized in Baltimore, Maryland, and Scott rented the "La Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson to work on his book, which had become the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychoanalyst and his wife, Nicole, who is also one of his patients. It was published in 1934 as Tender Is the Night. [1]. Critics regard it as one of Fitzgerald's finest works.