F. Scott Fitzgerald

1896–1940

The late novelist and short story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered one of the preeminent American authors of all time almost entirely due to the enormous posthumous success of his 1925 masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. The Minnesota native, born in 1896, was launched to moderate fame at age 24 with the publication of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. By the end of the decade, Fitzgerald had descended into drinking, while his wife and muse, Zelda, had suffered a mental breakdown. Following the unsuccessful release of Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and became a screenwriter. He died of a heart attack in 1940 at age 44, his final novel only half-completed. In the decades since, The Great Gatsby—regarded as perhaps the quintessential American novel as well as a definitive social history of the Jazz Age—has become required reading for virtually every American high school student and has had a transportive effect on generation after generation of readers.

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Collection: Deluxe 5-Book Hardcover Boxed Set

Now 67% Off

$20 at Amazon

$16 at Walmart

FULL NAME: Francis Scott Fitzgerald
BORN: September 24, 1896
DIED: December 21, 1940
BIRTHPLACE: St. Paul, Minnesota
SPOUSE: Zelda Fitzgerald (1920–1940)
CHILD: Frances
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Libra

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His namesake (and second cousin three times removed on his father’s side) was Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary McQuillan, was from an Irish-Catholic family that made a small fortune in Minnesota as wholesale grocers. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, had opened a wicker furniture business in St. Paul and, when it failed, took a job as a salesman for Procter & Gamble. During the first decade of Fitzgerald’s life, his father’s job took the family back and forth between Buffalo and Syracuse in upstate New York. When Fitzgerald was 12, Edward lost his job with Procter & Gamble, and the family moved back to St. Paul in 1908 to live off of his mother’s inheritance.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published at age 13 in his school newspaper.

The bright, handsome, and ambitious boy was the pride and joy of his parents, especially his mother. He attended the St. Paul Academy. When he was 13, he saw his first piece of writing appear in print: a detective story published in the school newspaper. In 1911, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, his parents sent him to the Newman School, a prestigious Catholic preparatory school in New Jersey. There, he met Father Sigourney Fay, who noticed his innate talent with the written word and encouraged him to pursue his literary ambitions.

After graduating from the Newman School in 1913, Fitzgerald decided to stay in New Jersey to continue his artistic development at Princeton University. There, he firmly dedicated himself to honing his craft as a writer, penning scripts for Princeton’s famous Triangle Club musicals as well as frequent articles for the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and stories for the Nassau Literary Magazine. However, Fitzgerald’s writing came at the expense of his coursework, and he was eventually placed on academic probation.

U.S. Army Service

In 1917, the year the United States joined World War I, Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton to join the Army. Afraid that he might die in battle with his literary dreams unfulfilled, Fitzgerald hastily wrote a novel called The Romantic Egotist in the weeks before reporting to duty. Although the publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons rejected the novel, the reviewer noted its originality and encouraged Fitzgerald to submit more work in the future.

Fitzgerald was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry and assigned to Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama. The war ended in November 1918, before Fitzgerald was ever deployed. Upon his discharge, he moved to New York City hoping to launch a career in advertising lucrative enough to convince his girlfriend, Zelda Sayre, to marry him. He quit his job after only a few months, however, and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel.

Fitzgerald published four novels during his lifetime and had been working on fifth before his untimely death. From the start, Fitzgerald was a best-selling author to watch, though he wasn’t considered a literary equal to his contemporaries like Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner on account of his personal life. Fitzgerald’s most famous book, The Great Gatsby, and his entire oeuvre have only become more celebrated with time. Today, he is considered one of the great American novelists of the 20^th century.

His books, in order of publication, are:

Watch The Great Gatsby onscreen 🍿 The 1974 version stars Robert Redford and the 2013 remake features Leonardo DiCaprio

Beginning in 1920 and continuing throughout the rest of his career, Fitzgerald supported himself financially by writing great numbers of short stories for popular publications such as The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. Some of his most notable stories include “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” “The Camel’s Back,” “The Last of the Belles,” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which served as inspiration for the 2008 movie of the same name starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. In total, Fitzgerald wrote more than 160 short stories.

After completing his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s life began to unravel. Always a heavy drinker, he progressed steadily into alcoholism and suffered prolonged bouts of writer’s block. After two years lost to alcohol and depression, in 1937, Fitzgerald attempted to revive his career as a screenwriter and freelance storywriter in Hollywood. He achieved modest financial, if not critical, success for his efforts before his death three years later.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, were married for 20 years and had a daughter named Frances.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was married to Zelda Fitzgerald for more than 20 years. She was Fitzgerald’s muse, and her likeness is prominently featured in his works including This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night.

The author met 18-year-old Zelda, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge, during his time in the U.S. Army. After a prolonged courtship, Zelda finally agreed to marry Francis. Their wedding—held on April 3, 1920, in New York City—came one week of the successful publication of his first novel, This Side of Paradise. In 1921, their only child, a daughter named Frances “Scottie” Fitzgerald, was born.

Beginning in the late 1920s, Zelda suffered from mental health issues, and the couple moved back and forth between Delaware and France. In 1930, Zelda suffered a breakdown. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and treated at the Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Towson, Maryland. That same year, she was admitted to a mental health clinic in Switzerland. Two years later, she was treated at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She spent the remaining years before her death in 1948 in and out of various mental health clinics.

Fitzgerald didn’t live to see his wife’s death. He died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44, in Hollywood, California. Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure, since none of his works received more than modest commercial or critical success during his lifetime.

• What little I’ve accomplished has been by the most laborious and uphill work, and I wish now I’d never relaxed or looked back—but said at the end of The Great Gatsby: “I’ve found my line—from now on this comes first.”
• Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.
• In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.
• It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess and it was an age of satire.
• Having once found the intensity of art, nothing else that can happen in life can ever again seem as important as the creative process.
• My characters are all Scott Fitzgerald.
• I didn’t know till 15 that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty.
• I never at any one time saw [Gatsby] clear myself—for he started as one man I knew and then changed into myself—the amalgam was never complete in my mind.
• Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.
• There are no second acts in American lives.
• Riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.
• I left my capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda’s sanitarium.
• Isn’t Hollywood a dump—in the human sense of the word. A hideous town... full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement.
• I was in love with a whirlwind and I must spin a net big enough to catch it.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!

Biography.com Editors

Staff Editorial Team and Contributors

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us