F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1896–1940)

During the 1920s many Americans lived with reckless abandon, attending wild parties, wearing glamorous clothing, and striving for personal fulfillment through material wealth. Yet this quest for pleasure was often accompanied by a sense of inner despair. In his short stories and novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald captured both the gaiety and the emptiness of the time.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, into a family with high social aspirations but little wealth. He entered Princeton University in 1913, but he failed to graduate. In 1917, he enlisted in the army. He was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, where he fell in love with Zelda Sayre, a young southern belle. Shortly after being discharged from the army, Fitzgerald published his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel earned him instant fame and wealth, which enabled him to persuade Zelda to marry him.

The Fitzgeralds soon became a part of the wealthy, extravagant, and hedonistic society that characterized the Roaring Twenties. Spending time in both New York and Europe, the glamorous couple mingled with rich and famous artists and aristocrats, attending countless parties and spending money recklessly. Despite his wild lifestyle, Fitzgerald remained a productive writer. During the 1920s, he published dozens of short stories and his most successful novel, The Great Gatsby (1926)—the story of a self-made man whose dreams of love and social acceptance lead to scandal and corruption and ultimately end in tragedy. The novel displayed both Fitzgerald's fascination with and growing distrust of the wealthy society he had embraced.

Following the stock market crash in 1929, Fitzgerald's life changed dramatically. His wife suffered a series of nervous breakdowns, his reputation as a writer declined, and financial difficulties forced him to seek work as a Hollywood screenwriter. Despite these setbacks, however, he managed to produce many more short stories and a second fine novel, Tender is the Night (1934). Focusing on the decline of a young American psychiatrist following his marriage to a wealthy patient, the novel reflected Fitzgerald's awareness of the tragedy that can result from an obsession with wealth and social status.

Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in 1940. At the time he was in the midst of writing The Last Tycoon (1941), a novel about a Hollywood film mogul.

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