The Great Gatsby

About the Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer whose works are iconic chronicles of the Jazz Ageu2014a term he himself coined. Born to an upper-middle-class family in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald attended Princeton University, where his writing career began in earnest, though he left without graduating to join the army during World War I. While stationed in Alabama in 1918, he met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre, a beautiful and free-spirited Southern belle. Their tumultuous romance would profoundly influence his writing and life. His first novel, 'This Side of Paradise' (1920), achieved overnight success, making him famous at age 24 and enabling him to marry Zelda. The couple became celebrities of the era, embodying the glamour, excess, and volatility of the Roaring Twenties. They lived lavishly in New York, Paris, and the French Riviera, moving among literary and cultural elites including Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Pablo Picasso. Fitzgerald's second novel, 'The Beautiful and Damned' (1922), explored the self-destructive nature of wealth and excess, themes that would reach their apex in his masterpiece, 'The Great Gatsby' (1925). Despite the latter's status today as the quintessential American novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication and sold poorly, contributing to Fitzgerald's increasingly precarious financial situation. The next decade brought personal and professional challenges. Zelda's diagnosis with schizophrenia in 1930 necessitated expensive treatments and hospitalizations. Fitzgerald struggled with alcoholism and depression while trying to maintain his literary career, writing prolifically for popular magazines to pay bills. His fourth novel, 'Tender Is the Night' (1934), though now highly regarded, was a commercial disappointment. By 1937, deeply in debt, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter, finding limited success in this new venture. His incomplete final novel, 'The Last Tycoon,' reflected his experiences in the film industry. Throughout his career, Fitzgerald produced nearly 160 short stories, many of which, like 'The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,' 'Babylon Revisited,' and 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,' are considered classics of American literature. His writing is characterized by its lyrical, evocative prose, keen social observation, and exploration of themes including aspiration, disillusionment, and the corruption of the American Dream. Though he died of a heart attack in 1940, believing himself a failure at just 44 years old, Fitzgerald's literary reputation experienced a remarkable revival after World War II. Today, he is recognized as one of America's greatest writers, whose personal struggles and artistic triumphs embody both the allure and the tragedy of his generation's pursuit of wealth, status, and pleasure.