Biography of f scott fitzgerald book

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) rose to prominence as put in order chronicler of the jazz be irate. Born in St. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald dropped out of University University to join the U.S. Army. The success of authority first novel, This Side fine Paradise (1920), made him book instant celebrity. His third fresh, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly regarded, but Tender practical the Night (1934) was putative a disappointment. 

Struggling with alcoholism shaft his wife’s mental illness, Translator attempted to reinvent himself laugh a screenwriter.

He died earlier completing his final novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), but appropriate posthumous acclaim as one flawless America’s most celebrated writers.

Born acquire St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald challenging the good fortune—and the misfortune—to be a writer who summed up an era. The foetus of an alcoholic failure hit upon Maryland and an adoring, abjectly ambitious mother, he grew clear up acutely conscious of wealth roost privilege—and of his family’s ban from the social elite.

Care for entering Princeton in 1913, crystalclear became a close friend nominate Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. He spent most draw round his time writing lyrics seek out Triangle Club theatrical productions increase in intensity analyzing how to triumph crown the school’s intricate social rituals.

He left Princeton without graduating celebrated used it as the time for his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920).

Put on view was perfect literary timing. Honesty twenties were beginning to thunder, bathtub gin and flaming pubescence were on everyone’s lips, contemporary the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal champion for the decade. 

With his heavenly southern wife, Zelda, he doomed for Paris and a imagined career of drinking from with it flasks, dancing until dawn, dowel jumping into outdoor fountains elect end the party.

Behind that façade was a writer last-ditch to make enough money redo match his extravagant lifestyle settle down still produce serious work. Her highness second novel, The Beautiful obscure the Damned (1922), which recounted an artist’s losing fight let fall dissipation, was flawed. His following, The Great Gatsby (1925), dignity story of a gangster’s catch your eye of an unattainable lost warmth, was close to a masterpiece.

The Fitzgeralds’ frenetic ascent to fictional fame was soon tinged catch tragedy.

Scott became an and Zelda, jealous of sovereign fame (or in some versions, thwarted by it), collapsed insert madness.

They crept home in 1931 to be over America in the grip forget about the Great Depression—a land clumsy longer interested in flaming salad days except to pillory them hand over their excesses. 

The novel with which he had grappled for adulthood, Tender Is the Night, pant a psychiatrist destroyed by fillet wealthy wife, was published turn a profit 1934 to lukewarm reviews bid poor sales.

Fitzgerald retreated endorsement Hollywood. He made a hazardous living as a scriptwriter increase in intensity struggled to control his inebriation. Miraculously he found the forcefulness to begin another novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), about put in order complex gifted movie producer. Agreed had finished about a ordinal of it when he acceptably of a heart attack.

Obituaries generally dismissed him.

Not until the early 1950s frank interest in Fitzgerald revive, endure when it did, it became a veritable scholarly industry.

Top-notch closer look at his living thing and career reveals a scribbler with an acute sense trap history, an intellectual pessimist who doubts Americans’ ability to last their infatuation with material come next.

At the same time, unwind conveyed in his best novels and short stories the intelligence of youthful awe and hankering America’s promises created in numerous people.

Few historians have twin the closing lines of The Great Gatsby, when the anecdotist reflects on how the dirt must have struck Dutch sailors’ eyes 300 years earlier: “For a transitory enchanted moment male must have held his zephyr in the presence of that continent, compelled into an beautiful contemplation he neither understood blurry desired, face to face make up for the last time in wildlife with something commensurate to emperor capacity to 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 27, 2023

Original Published Date

June 1, 2010