F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. His father was from the Old South and his mother was a daughter of a wealthy Irish Immigrant. Fitzgerald went to St. Paul Academy. His first story was a story in the school newspaper about a detective. He then attended the Newman School, in New Jersey. He was a member of the Princeton Class of 1917. He got a literary apprenticeship and neglected his schoolwork. He wrote in the Princeton Tiger and Nassau Literary Magazine. Because he was unlikely to graduate, Francis joined the army and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. He thought he was going to die in the war, and quickly wrote the novel, “The Romantic Egotist”. Charles Scribner’s Sons praised the novel and wanted him to resubmit it.

After breaking his engagement with Zelda Sayre, Fitzgerald returned to St Paul to write his novel “This Side of Paradise”, which was accepted by editor Maxwell Perkins. This publication made him famous over night. A week later he married Zelda. Wanting to seek tranquility, Fitzgerald went to France where he wrote “The Great Gatsby”. The sales of Gatsby were disappointing, but the stage and movie brought more income. While his wife Zelda was having medical issues, he wrote the novel “Save me the Waltz”. When Zelda went to the hospital again, Fitzgerald only contacted his daughter Scottie through mail. He got a job with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to do screen writes. He paid off a lot of debts this way. Fitzgerald then started on “the Love of the Last Tycoon”, when he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940. Zelda perished in a fire in 1948.

http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html