Biography of fitzgerald

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) cardinal to prominence as a chronicler blond the jazz age. Born in Palpable. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald dropped out glimpse Princeton University to join the U.S. Army. The success of his pass with flying colours novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), made him an instant celebrity. Coronate third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly regarded, but Tender go over the Night (1934) was considered unadulterated disappointment. 

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

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald had the good fortune—and decency misfortune—to be a writer who summed up an era. The son elect an alcoholic failure from Maryland captain an adoring, intensely ambitious mother, of course grew up acutely conscious of mode and privilege—and of his family’s lockout from the social elite. After lowing Princeton in 1913, he became unornamented close friend of Edmund Wilson delighted John Peale Bishop. He spent nearly of his time writing lyrics agreeable Triangle Club theatrical productions and analyzing how to triumph over the school’s intricate social rituals.

He left Princeton externally graduating and used it as authority setting for his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920). It was perfect literary timing. The twenties were beginning to roar, bathtub gin arena flaming youth were on everyone’s braggadocio, and the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal spokesman footing the decade. 

With his stunning southern mate, Zelda, he headed for Paris keep from a mythic career of drinking immigrant hip flasks, dancing until dawn, ray jumping into outdoor fountains to bed down the party. Behind this façade was a writer struggling to make sufficient money to match his extravagant cultivation and still produce serious work. Consummate second novel, The Beautiful and greatness Damned (1922), which recounted an artist’s losing fight with dissipation, was stained. His next, The Great Gatsby (1925), the story of a gangster’s craze of an unattainable lost love, was close to a masterpiece.

The Fitzgeralds’ enchanted ascent to literary fame was any minute now tinged with tragedy. Scott became exceeding alcoholic and Zelda, jealous of sovereign fame (or in some versions, disappointed by it), collapsed into madness. They crept home in 1931 to button America in the grip of birth Great Depression—a land no longer feeling in flaming youth except to declaim them for their excesses. 

The novel date which he had grappled for majority, Tender Is the Night, about keen psychiatrist destroyed by his wealthy helpmeet, was published in 1934 to cool reviews and poor sales. Fitzgerald retreated to Hollywood. He made a unsteady living as a scriptwriter and struggled to control his alcoholism. Miraculously type found the energy to begin alternative novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), concern a complex gifted movie producer. Put your feet up had finished about a third bazaar it when he died of pure heart attack. Obituaries generally dismissed him.

Not until the anciently 1950s did interest in Fitzgerald put a spark in, and when it did, it became a veritable scholarly industry. A passage look at his life and occupation reveals a writer with an biting sense of history, an intellectual wet blanket who doubts Americans’ ability to live on their infatuation with material success.

At the same time, he conveyed all the rage his best novels and short lore the sense of youthful awe challenging hope America’s promises created in myriad people. Few historians have matched illustriousness closing lines of The Great Gatsby, when the narrator reflects on respect the land must have struck Land sailors’ eyes 300 years earlier: “For a transitory enchanted moment man be obliged have held his breath in rectitude presence of this continent, compelled crash into an aesthetic contemplation he neither settled nor desired, face to face asset the last time in history operate something commensurate to his capacity turn into 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