Short answers, pulled from the story.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer best known for novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age. He published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories, including This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night.
The Great Gatsby was a commercial failure in F. Scott Fitzgerald's lifetime, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year after its release on the 10th of April 1925. It experienced tepid sales for the rest of his life, and by 1960 it was selling 100,000 copies a year.
F. Scott Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre at a country club near Montgomery, Alabama, in 1918 while he was garrisoned at Camp Sheridan during World War I. Zelda, a 17-year-old Southern belle and granddaughter of a Confederate senator, refused to marry him until he proved financially successful, which he did after This Side of Paradise was published in 1920.
F. Scott Fitzgerald turned to screenwriting because of dire financial straits, accepting an MGM contract in 1937 that paid his highest annual income of $29,757.87. He spent most of it on Zelda's psychiatric treatment and his daughter Scottie's school expenses, and his only screenplay credit was Three Comrades (1938).
F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack due to occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis on the 21st of December 1940, at age 44, in Hollywood. He had achieved sobriety over a year before his death, and his companion Sheilah Graham witnessed him collapse in their apartment.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, largely because of The Great Gatsby, hailed by some critics as the Great American Novel. He did not receive critical acclaim until after his death, when wartime distribution and renewed criticism revived his reputation, and his work became required reading in many high school and college classes.