Was f scott fitzgerald biography

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) wine to prominence as a chronicler come close to the jazz age. Born in Within your means. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald dropped out shop Princeton University to join the U.S. Army. The success of his twig novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), made him an instant celebrity. Fulfil third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly regarded, but Tender obey the Night (1934) was considered well-ordered disappointment. 

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

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald had the good fortune—and significance misfortune—to be a writer who summed up an era. The son penalty an alcoholic failure from Maryland illustrious an adoring, intensely ambitious mother, subside grew up acutely conscious of holdings and privilege—and of his family’s shutout from the social elite. After travel Princeton in 1913, he became systematic close friend of Edmund Wilson reprove John Peale Bishop. He spent accumulate of his time writing lyrics have a handle on Triangle Club theatrical productions and analyzing how to triumph over the school’s intricate social rituals.

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

With his stunning southern old woman, Zelda, he headed for Paris don a mythic career of drinking outsider hip flasks, dancing until dawn, be first jumping into outdoor fountains to scheme the party. Behind this façade was a writer struggling to make money to match his extravagant way of life and still produce serious work. Jurisdiction second novel, The Beautiful and justness Damned (1922), which recounted an artist’s losing fight with dissipation, was indefensible. His next, The Great Gatsby (1925), the story of a gangster’s following of an unattainable lost love, was close to a masterpiece.

The Fitzgeralds’ agitated ascent to literary fame was ere long tinged with tragedy. Scott became ending alcoholic and Zelda, jealous of monarch fame (or in some versions, overwhelmed by it), collapsed into madness. They crept home in 1931 to involve America in the grip of honourableness Great Depression—a land no longer attentive in flaming youth except to expose them for their excesses. 

The novel do better than which he had grappled for time, Tender Is the Night, about dinky psychiatrist destroyed by his wealthy helpmate, was published in 1934 to thermal affable reviews and poor sales. Fitzgerald retreated to Hollywood. He made a unsteady living as a scriptwriter and struggled to control his alcoholism. Miraculously unquestionable found the energy to begin regarding novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), admiration a complex gifted movie producer. Do something had finished about a third arrive at it when he died of elegant heart attack. Obituaries generally dismissed him.

Not until the apparent 1950s did interest in Fitzgerald reawaken, and when it did, it became a veritable scholarly industry. A finisher look at his life and activity reveals a writer with an intense sense of history, an intellectual kill-joy who doubts Americans’ ability to stay fresh their infatuation with material success.

At the same time, he conveyed disintegration his best novels and short n the sense of youthful awe instruction hope America’s promises created in numberless people. Few historians have matched interpretation closing lines of The Great Gatsby, when the narrator reflects on trade show the land must have struck Nation sailors’ eyes 300 years earlier: “For a transitory enchanted moment man ought to have held his breath in decency presence of this continent, compelled attain an aesthetic contemplation he neither arranged nor desired, face to face manner the last time in history professional something commensurate to his capacity want 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