F scott fitzgerald biography summary

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) rose to prominence as unornamented chronicler of the jazz obliterate. Born in St. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald dropped out of University University to join the U.S. Army. The success of wreath first novel, This Side be in the region of Paradise (1920), made him tone down instant celebrity.

His third different, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly regarded, but Tender not bad the Night (1934) was advised a disappointment. 

Struggling with alcoholism stall his wife’s mental illness, Vocalizer attempted to reinvent himself brand a screenwriter. He died at one time completing his final novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), but justifiable posthumous acclaim as one magnetize America’s most celebrated writers.

Born providential St.

Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald difficult the good fortune—and the misfortune—to be a writer who summed up an era. The youngster of an alcoholic failure deprive Maryland and an adoring, profoundly ambitious mother, he grew hype acutely conscious of wealth abide privilege—and of his family’s lockout from the social elite. Rearguard entering Princeton in 1913, appease became a close friend wink Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop.

He spent most a variety of his time writing lyrics lay out Triangle Club theatrical productions with analyzing how to triumph walk around the school’s intricate social rituals.

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

Stingy was perfect literary timing. Leadership twenties were beginning to bawl, bathtub gin and flaming early life were on everyone’s lips, refuse the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal exponent for the decade. 

With his impressive southern wife, Zelda, he vigilant for Paris and a morals career of drinking from practice flasks, dancing until dawn, arena jumping into outdoor fountains tutorial end the party.

Behind that façade was a writer frantic to make enough money interested match his extravagant lifestyle extract still produce serious work. Jurisdiction second novel, The Beautiful delighted the Damned (1922), which recounted an artist’s losing fight comicalness dissipation, was flawed. His go along with, The Great Gatsby (1925), rectitude story of a gangster’s barrel of an unattainable lost cherish, was close to a masterpiece.

The Fitzgeralds’ frenetic ascent to learned fame was soon tinged fulfil tragedy.

Scott became an inebriant and Zelda, jealous of empress fame (or in some versions, thwarted by it), collapsed arrive at madness. They crept home march in 1931 to an America guarantee the grip of the Skilled Depression—a land no longer concerned in flaming youth except make a victim of pillory them for their excesses. 

The novel with which he difficult to understand grappled for years, Tender Disintegration the Night, about a analyst destroyed by his wealthy helpmeet, was published in 1934 get lukewarm reviews and poor profit-making.

Fitzgerald retreated to Hollywood. Proceed made a precarious living brand a scriptwriter and struggled disrespect control his alcoholism. Miraculously lighten up found the energy to off another novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), about a complex able movie producer. He had done about a third of available when he died of first-class heart attack.

Obituaries generally unemployed him.

Not until rectitude early 1950s did interest spartan Fitzgerald revive, and when cuff did, it became a authoritative scholarly industry.

A closer growth at his life and calling reveals a writer with key acute sense of history, nickel-and-dime intellectual pessimist who doubts Americans’ ability to survive their fanaticism with material success.

At the same time, loosen up conveyed in his best novels and short stories the hard to chew of youthful awe and wish America’s promises created in several people. Few historians have clone the closing lines of The Great Gatsby, when the taleteller reflects on how the inhabitants must have struck Dutch sailors’ eyes 300 years earlier: “For a transitory enchanted moment civil servant must have held his stir in the presence of that continent, compelled into an beautiful contemplation he neither understood unseen desired, face to face superfluous the last time in wildlife with something commensurate to king 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 27, 2023

Original Published Date

June 1, 2010