F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald was the son of Edward Fitzgerald, a respectable businessman from a gentile family, and Mollie McQuillan, the descendent of Irish immigrants. Fitzgerald loved writing throughout his childhood, but it wasn’t until he attended Catholic school in 1911 that a priest recognized his talent. Encouraged to pursue his literary ambitions, Fitzgerald went to Princeton in 1913. Fitzgerald’s writing thrived in the university environment, but while he was busy creating prose, poetry, and musical comedies, his grades suffered. He left Princeton in 1917, without a degree, to join the army. Fitzgerald never fought in World War I, however, because his battalion had not yet left for Europe when the armistice was agreed. Having fallen madly in love with a young woman named Zelda Sayre while training in the army, Fitzgerald now focused his ambitions on making enough money to marry. He dabbled in advertising for a while but didn’t meet his success until 1920, when his first publication, This Side of Paradise, threw him into the spotlight. Fitzgerald and Zelda married and enjoyed his literary success throughout the 1920s, during which they wrote, traveled through Europe, and had a daughter, Scottie. Fitzgerald received great literary acclaim for his work, namely for The Great Gatsby (1925), and the couple moved in fashionable and artistic circles. Towards the end of the decade, however, their lives began to unravel; Fitzgerald’s alcoholism made him increasingly volatile, and the stress of Zelda’s ballet dancing career led to her mental breakdown in 1930. Moving back to America, and haunted by ill health, Fitzgerald found it almost impossible to work during the 1930s, and his writing career suffered. After a brief stint working in Hollywood and writing in magazines, Fitzgerald died in 1940 of a heart attack.