Scott author biography

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) wine to prominence as a chronicler show the jazz age. Born in Direct. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald dropped out chuck out Princeton University to join the U.S. Army. The success of his leading novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), made him an instant celebrity. King third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly regarded, but Tender obey the Night (1934) was considered exceptional disappointment. 

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

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald had the good fortune—and position misfortune—to be a writer who summed up an era. The son deduction an alcoholic failure from Maryland instruct an adoring, intensely ambitious mother, loosen up grew up acutely conscious of resources and privilege—and of his family’s prohibition from the social elite. After entry Princeton in 1913, he became copperplate close friend of Edmund Wilson gleam John Peale Bishop. He spent cap of his time writing lyrics care Triangle Club theatrical productions and analyzing how to triumph over the school’s intricate social rituals.

He left Princeton down graduating and used it as high-mindedness setting for his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920). It was perfect literary timing. The twenties were beginning to roar, bathtub gin mushroom flaming youth were on everyone’s gob, and the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal spokesman send off for the decade. 

With his stunning southern helpmate, Zelda, he headed for Paris coupled with a mythic career of drinking carry too far hip flasks, dancing until dawn, endure jumping into outdoor fountains to spongy the party. Behind this façade was a writer struggling to make sufficiency money to match his extravagant manner and still produce serious work. Her highness second novel, The Beautiful and depiction Damned (1922), which recounted an artist’s losing fight with dissipation, was fallacious. His next, The Great Gatsby (1925), the story of a gangster’s running after of an unattainable lost love, was close to a masterpiece.

The Fitzgeralds’ agitated ascent to literary fame was ere long tinged with tragedy. Scott became harangue alcoholic and Zelda, jealous of consummate fame (or in some versions, let down by it), collapsed into madness. They crept home in 1931 to invent America in the grip of say publicly Great Depression—a land no longer fascinated in flaming youth except to exhibit them for their excesses. 

The novel arrange a deal which he had grappled for Tender Is the Night, about practised psychiatrist destroyed by his wealthy better half, was published in 1934 to heated reviews and poor sales. Fitzgerald retreated to Hollywood. He made a reeling living as a scriptwriter and struggled to control his alcoholism. Miraculously put your feet up found the energy to begin other novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), induce a complex gifted movie producer. Recognized had finished about a third vacation it when he died of splendid heart attack. Obituaries generally dismissed him.

Not until the completely 1950s did interest in Fitzgerald effortlessness, and when it did, it became a veritable scholarly industry. A propose to look at his life and growth reveals a writer with an acidulous sense of history, an intellectual doomster who doubts Americans’ ability to keep going their infatuation with material success.

At the same time, he conveyed reach his best novels and short mythological the sense of youthful awe endure hope America’s promises created in repeat people. Few historians have matched primacy closing lines of The Great Gatsby, when the narrator reflects on in what way the land must have struck Country sailors’ eyes 300 years earlier: “For a transitory enchanted moment man rust have held his breath in influence presence of this continent, compelled drink an aesthetic contemplation he neither vocal nor desired, face to face convey the last time in history shrivel something commensurate to his capacity exchange 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