Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, to Edward and Mollie Fitzgerald. He is considered one of the most American writers, meaning that he explored the themes most associated with the "American Dream". Fitzgerald is also an iconic author of the 1920s - the Jazz Age - an age when flamboyance, extravagance, romance and rebellion were idolized. In some ways, F. Scott Fitzgerald's work helped create this time, and in others, Fitzgerald was created by it.
Fitzgerald spent his childhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, New York, and then again in St. Paul. When F. Scott Fitzgerald was 15, his parents sent him to a Catholic preparatory school, Newman School, in New Jersey. It was at Newman that he met Father Fay, who introduced him to the works of many literary figures, and whose moral instruction Fitzgerald never seemed able to completely forget. After Newman, he attended Princeton University, where he poured his effort into writing for the school's Triangle Club and literary magazines, rather than his school work. After taking a semester off from school, Fitzgerald returned to Princeton, only to leave before graduating to join the Army during World War I. The War ended before he saw any combat.
It was during Fitzgerald's training in the south that he met Zelda Sayre, the daughter of a prominent Alabama family. Their engagement and the rest of their relationship was tumultuous, as the couple, like Fitzgerald's characters, sought after fame and fortune. They would both begin drinking, Zelda especially.
F. Scott Fitzgerald published many short stories in The Saturday Evening Post. In 1920, his first novel, This Side of Paradise - in which the first flapper appeared - was published. Its success made Scott and Zelda celebrities in New York society, fueling their excessive lifestyle. This couple was popular, good-looking, and led an over-the-top lifestyle. It was the kind of lifestyle the Fitzgerald wrote about, and was the ideal of the Jazz Age. Soon, however, Fitzgerald was using his literary talent to make quick money to try to support his flamboyance.
The Fitzgeralds spent much of 1924 in Europe. F. Scott Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby. While in Europe, he became a part of Gertrude Stein's "Lost Generation", a group of American expatriate artists, and began a friendship with Ernest Hemingway.
Zelda Fitzgerald had several mental breakdowns, and would spend the end of her life in sanitariums. F. Scott Fitzgerald decided to begin writing for movies. Many of his screenplays were changed so that they hardly resembled his original writing. He wrote, or rather began writing, his last novel, The Last Tycoon, which was focused on the movie industry. He died of a heart attack before it was finished, in 1940. Zelda was buried beside him eight years later.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing is heavily identified with the America of the 1920s. Although he did not create the flapper, or gangster, or romantic hero, Fitzgerald's work turned them into symbols of the era. The life he observed so acutely in his writing is the life Scott and Zelda participated in. It is almost as though the expectation he created was what his ambition and pursuit of fame forced him to live up to.
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