When was F. Scott Fitzgerald born and where?

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on the 24th of September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He was named after a distant cousin who wrote the lyrics to the national anthem and was born into a middle-class Catholic family.

Who was the first great love of F. Scott Fitzgerald?

The first great love of F. Scott Fitzgerald was 16-year-old Ginevra King, a Chicago debutante he met during Christmas break of 1914. Their relationship ended when Ginevra was expelled from her school for flirting with other men, and her father told Fitzgerald that poor boys should not think of marrying rich girls.

When did F. Scott Fitzgerald die and what was the cause of death?

F. Scott Fitzgerald died on the 20th of December 1940 at 44 years old from a heart attack due to occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis. He collapsed on the floor of his apartment after experiencing a dizzy spell at the premiere of This Thing Called Love.

How many copies of The Great Gatsby sold in its first year?

The Great Gatsby sold fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year after its publication in 1925. Despite the tepid sales and lack of immediate popularity, the novel eventually became known as the Great American Novel.

When did F. Scott Fitzgerald meet Zelda Sayre and when did they marry?

F. Scott Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre in June 1918 while stationed at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. They married in 1920 after he published the commercially successful novel This Side of Paradise.

Where is F. Scott Fitzgerald buried and when was the burial location changed?

F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried in Rockville Cemetery, where he was initially laid to rest with a simple Protestant service in 1940. In 1975, his daughter Scottie successfully petitioned to have his remains moved to the family plot in the Catholic Saint Mary's Cemetery.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on the 24th of September 1896, a date that would eventually become synonymous with the American dream and its inevitable collapse. He was named after a distant cousin who wrote the lyrics to the national anthem, a heavy inheritance for a child born into a middle-class Catholic family in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was an Irish and English descendant who had moved west to open a wicker-furniture business, while his mother, Mary McQuillan, came from a wealthy Irish immigrant family. The family's financial stability was fragile, and just one year after his birth, his father's business failed, forcing them to move to Buffalo, New York. This early instability instilled a deep-seated insecurity in the young boy, who would later describe himself as half black Irish and half old American stock, burdened by exaggerated ancestral pretensions. The family returned to Saint Paul in 1908 after his father was fired by Procter & Gamble, leaving him destitute and reliant on his mother's inheritance to maintain a middle-class lifestyle. Despite these early struggles, Fitzgerald displayed an unusual intelligence and a keen interest in literature, publishing his first piece of fiction at the age of thirteen in his school newspaper. His parents sent him to the Newman School in New Jersey, where Father Sigourney Fay recognized his literary potential and encouraged him to become a writer, setting him on a path that would eventually lead him to the heights of fame and the depths of despair.

The 18-year-old Fitzgerald returned home to Saint Paul during Christmas break of 1914 and met 16-year-old Ginevra King, a Chicago debutante who would become the first great love of his life and the muse for many of his most famous characters. Their relationship spanned several years, but it was doomed from the start by class differences and the imperious nature of Ginevra's father, Charles Garfield King. King reportedly told the young Fitzgerald that poor boys should not think of marrying rich girls, a line that Fitzgerald later wrote in his ledger as a foreboding omen. Despite the distance and the social barriers, Fitzgerald traveled across the country to visit her family's Lake Forest estate, but the relationship ended when Ginevra was expelled from her school for flirting with other men. Rejected and heartbroken, a suicidal Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army during World War I, hoping to die in battle and have his unpublished novel become a success in the wake of his death. While stationed at Fort Leavenworth under the command of Captain Dwight D. Eisenhower, he wrote a 120,000-word manuscript entitled The Romantic Egotist, which was rejected by Scribner's despite the praise of reviewer Max Perkins. The rejection of his first love and his first novel left him adrift, but it was the rejection of his second love that would ultimately force him to find his voice. In June 1918, while stationed at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a 17-year-old Southern belle and the granddaughter of a Confederate senator. Zelda initially rejected his marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, but she agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise in 1920. The novel became a cultural sensation, cementing his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade, but the early years of their marriage were more akin to a friendship than a passionate romance, with Fitzgerald later admitting that he did not love her again until after she became pregnant.

The 26th of March 1920 marked the publication of This Side of Paradise, a novel that sold approximately 40,000 copies in its first year and made Fitzgerald a household name. The newlywed couple lived in luxury at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City, where they became national celebrities for their wild behavior, with Scott doing handstands in the lobby and Zelda sliding down the hotel banisters. They moved to the Commodore Hotel, where they spent half an hour spinning in the revolving door, and Fitzgerald likened their juvenile behavior to two small children in a great bright unexplored barn. The couple traveled to Europe in 1924, where Fitzgerald worked on his third novel, The Great Gatsby, which he had been planning since 1923. The novel, initially titled Trimalchio, followed the rise of a parvenu who seeks wealth to win the woman he loves, drawing heavily on his experiences on Long Island and his lifelong obsession with Ginevra King. Despite generally favorable reviews from literary critics like Willa Cather, T. S. Eliot, and Edith Wharton, the novel was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. The book's tepid sales and lack of immediate popularity would haunt Fitzgerald for the rest of his life, but it would eventually be hailed by some literary critics as the Great American Novel. The novel's enduring legacy is a testament to Fitzgerald's ability to capture the spirit of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. The era represented a morally permissive time when Americans became disillusioned with prevailing social norms and obsessed with self-gratification, and Fitzgerald's work captured the essence of this hedonistic era.

During the winter of 1925, the Fitzgeralds returned to France, where they alternated between Paris and the French Riviera until 1926. It was during this period that Fitzgerald became friends with Ernest Hemingway, a then relatively unknown writer who would later become one of the most famous authors of the 20th century. Hemingway later recalled that during this early period of their relationship, Fitzgerald became his most loyal friend, but their friendship was complicated by Zelda's mental instability and Hemingway's disdain for her. Hemingway claimed that Zelda had a mental illness when she insisted that jazz singer Al Jolson was greater than Jesus Christ, and he alleged that Zelda sought to destroy her husband. The rift between the two writers grew when Zelda belittled Fitzgerald with homophobic slurs and accused him of engaging in a homosexual relationship with Hemingway. In response, Fitzgerald decided to have sex with a prostitute to prove his heterosexuality, a decision that led to a bitter quarrel and lingering jealousy. Despite the personal conflicts, Hemingway vowed to put any differences with Fitzgerald aside and to aid him in any way he could, although he feared Zelda would derail Fitzgerald's writing career. The friendship was further strained by the financial pressures of the era, with Hemingway alleging that Zelda sought to destroy her husband by forcing him to write lucrative short stories for magazines like The Saturday Evening Post instead of focusing on his novels. The relationship between the two writers was a complex mix of admiration, jealousy, and mutual destruction, with Hemingway later describing Zelda as insane and Fitzgerald as a victim of his own circumstances.

The 1930s marked the beginning of the end for Fitzgerald, as his works were deemed elitist and materialistic during the Great Depression. By 1936, his book royalties amounted to only $80, and the cost of his opulent lifestyle and Zelda's medical bills quickly caught up, placing him in constant debt. He relied on loans from his agent, Harold Ober, and publisher Maxwell Perkins, but when Ober ceased advancing money, an ashamed Fitzgerald severed ties with his agent. His alcoholism, which had been a problem for many years, undermined his health, resulting in cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, and recurring tuberculosis. The sudden death of his mother and Zelda's mental deterioration led to his marriage further disintegrating, and he saw Zelda for the last time on a 1939 trip to Cuba. In 1937, his dire financial straits compelled him to accept a lucrative contract as a screenwriter with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, necessitating his relocation to Hollywood. Despite earning his highest annual income up to that point, he spent the bulk of his income on Zelda's psychiatric treatment and his daughter Scottie's school expenses. His work in Hollywood was largely uncredited, and he ignored scriptwriting rules, including descriptions more fitting for a novel. The failure in Hollywood pushed him to return to drinking, and he drank nearly 40 beers a day in 1939. During this period, he mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby in a sequence of 17 short stories, and he wrote regretfully to his daughter, wishing he had never relaxed or looked back.

The 20th of December 1940 marked the final night of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life, as he and his companion Sheilah Graham attended the premiere of This Thing Called Love. As the couple left the Pantages Theatre, a sober Fitzgerald experienced a dizzy spell and had difficulty walking to his vehicle, remarking in a strained voice that people would think he was drunk. The following day, he collapsed on the floor without uttering a sound, and after failed efforts to revive him, Graham ran to fetch Harry Culver, the building's manager. Upon entering the apartment, Culver stated that he was afraid he was dead. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack due to occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis at 44 years old. His funeral was attended by only thirty people, including his only child, Scottie, his agent Harold Ober, and his lifelong editor Maxwell Perkins. Zelda eulogized him in a letter to a friend, describing him as spiritually generous and the best friend a person could have. At the time of his death, the Roman Catholic Church denied the family's request that he be buried in the family plot in the Catholic Saint Mary's Cemetery, and he was buried instead with a simple Protestant service at Rockville Cemetery. When Zelda died in a fire at the Highland Hospital in 1948, she was buried next to him in Rockville Cemetery. In 1975, Scottie successfully petitioned to have the earlier decision revisited, and her parents' remains were moved to the family plot in Saint Mary's. The final line of The Great Gatsby, inscribed on their headstone, reads: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

At the time of his death, Fitzgerald believed that his life was a failure and his work was forgotten, but within one year after his death, Edmund Wilson completed his unfinished fifth novel The Last Tycoon, sparking new interest and discussion among critics. During World War II, The Great Gatsby gained further popularity when the Council on Books in Wartime distributed free Armed Services Edition copies to American soldiers serving overseas, and by 1945, over 123,000 copies had been distributed among U.S. troops. By 1960, the book was selling 100,000 copies per year, and The New York Times editorialist Arthur Mizener proclaimed it a masterwork of American literature. By the 1950s, Fitzgerald had become a cult figure in American culture, and his friend Edmund Wilson remarked that he now received copious letters from female admirers of his works. In 1971, his childhood Summit Terrace home in St. Paul became a National Historic Landmark, and in 1994, the World Theater in St. Paul was renamed the Fitzgerald Theater. Today, The Great Gatsby has sold millions of copies, and the novel is required reading in many high school and college classes. According to Professor John Kuehl of New York University, if you want to know what America's like, you read The Great Gatsby, and Fitzgerald is the quintessential American writer. His life and work have been reevaluated and celebrated, transforming him from a failed alcoholic into an enduring legend of the West.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Jazz Age and The Great Gatsby

The Lost Generation and The Hemingway Feud

The Crack-Up and The Hollywood Years

The Final Year and The Death of a Legend

The Posthumous Resurrection