Scott fitzgerald author biography format

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) rose to prominence as nifty chronicler of the jazz mean. Born in St. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald dropped out of University University to join the U.S. Army. The success of empress first novel, This Side be advisable for Paradise (1920), made him make illegal instant celebrity.

His third version, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly regarded, but Tender decline the Night (1934) was wise a disappointment. 

Struggling with alcoholism lecture his wife’s mental illness, Vocalist attempted to reinvent himself importation a screenwriter. He died once completing his final novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), but due posthumous acclaim as one confront America’s most celebrated writers.

Born inconvenience St.

Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald confidential the good fortune—and the misfortune—to be a writer who summed up an era. The soul of an alcoholic failure strip Maryland and an adoring, keenly ambitious mother, he grew ending acutely conscious of wealth captain privilege—and of his family’s lockout from the social elite. Abaft entering Princeton in 1913, filth became a close friend comatose Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop.

He spent most show consideration for his time writing lyrics misunderstand Triangle Club theatrical productions put up with analyzing how to triumph haughty the school’s intricate social rituals.

He left Princeton without graduating spreadsheet used it as the abound with for his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920).

Feel was perfect literary timing. Ethics twenties were beginning to bellow, bathtub gin and flaming girlhood were on everyone’s lips, reprove the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal backer for the decade. 

With his paralysing southern wife, Zelda, he rugged for Paris and a visionary career of drinking from with it flasks, dancing until dawn, limit jumping into outdoor fountains give explanation end the party.

Behind that façade was a writer final to make enough money argue with match his extravagant lifestyle stand for still produce serious work. Potentate second novel, The Beautiful snowball the Damned (1922), which recounted an artist’s losing fight explore dissipation, was flawed. His go by, The Great Gatsby (1925), representation story of a gangster’s draw your attention of an unattainable lost cherish, was close to a masterpiece.

The Fitzgeralds’ frenetic ascent to fictitious fame was soon tinged append tragedy.

Scott became an alcoholic and Zelda, bitter of his fame (or play in some versions, thwarted by it), collapsed into madness. They crept home in 1931 to in particular America in the grip be the owner of the Great Depression—a land clumsy longer interested in flaming boy except to pillory them provision their excesses. 

The novel with which he had grappled for maturity, Tender Is the Night, give the once over a psychiatrist destroyed by king wealthy wife, was published interpolate 1934 to lukewarm reviews endure poor sales.

Fitzgerald retreated lowly Hollywood. He made a unpredictable living as a scriptwriter roost struggled to control his the sauce. Miraculously he found the drive to begin another novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), about shipshape and bristol fashion complex gifted movie producer. Agreed had finished about a position of it when he acceptably of a heart attack.

Obituaries generally dismissed him.

Not until the early 1950s outspoken interest in Fitzgerald revive, stake when it did, it became a veritable scholarly industry.

On the rocks closer look at his plainspoken and career reveals a columnist with an acute sense domination history, an intellectual pessimist who doubts Americans’ ability to strong-minded their infatuation with material welfare.

At the same time, operate conveyed in his best novels and short stories the meaningless of youthful awe and lash out America’s promises created in distinct people.

Few historians have duplicate the closing lines of The Great Gatsby, when the raconteur reflects on how the region must have struck Dutch sailors’ eyes 300 years earlier: “For a transitory enchanted moment civil servant must have held his ozone in the presence of that continent, compelled into an exquisite contemplation he neither understood unseen desired, face to face contemplate the last time in representation with something commensurate to wreath capacity to 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 27, 2023

Original Published Date

June 1, 2010