F. Scott Fitzgerald

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F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
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Early Biography

• Sept 24,1896 Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald born
  in St. Paul, MN
• His parents were Mary McQuillan, the daughter of
  Irish immigrants, and Edward Fitzgerald, a
  salesman. Both were Catholic.
• Two sisters, ages one and three, had died from
  influenza shortly before his birth. Probably
  because of this, his mother became overly
  protective.
• Five years later, Fitzgeralds sister, Annabelle,
  was born
• Attended the St. Paul Academy, then the Newman
  School, a Catholic prep school in New Jersey.
  

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Fitzgerald grew up in a family of declining and
precarious fortune. His father, Edward, failed
as a manufacturer of wicker furniture in St.
Paul. He became a salesman for Proctor Gamble,
but was dismissed in 1908 when Fitzgerald was
twelve years old.
Fitzgeralds mother, Mollie, helped support the
family with her inheritance. They moved to an
apartment in this brownstone row house in St.
Paul, Minnesota, in an area called Summit
Terrace, a section of the city inhabited by the
citys wealthiest residents.
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While his family was not prosperous, Fitzgeralds
mother nurtured social ambitions in her only son.
An elderly aunt helped finance his tuition at a
private Catholic boarding school in New Jersey
called The Newman School and then, in 1913, at
Princeton University. At the time, Princeton
University was viewed as a training ground for
the American upper class.
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Coming from a background of financial anxiety,
while at Princeton, Fitzgerald developed a
fascination with the very rich.
While his grades were low, he excelled in his
writings for the Princeton Triangle Club Dramatic
Society and the Princeton Tiger. Fitzgeralds
writing from that time shows that he was
self-conscious about the differences between
himself and his wealthy classmates.
6
Scott Zelda Fitzgerald

• On academic probation, Fitzgerald joined the army
  as a 2nd lieutenant in 1917.
• Afraid that he might die in the war, Fitzgerald
  quickly finished a novel he had been working on
  called The Romantic Egoist. While he received a
  rejection letter from Charles Scribners Sons
  Publishing Co., the novels originality was
  praised. He was encouraged to resubmit the novel
  after revision.
• June 1918 While on assignment in Montgomery,
  AL, he fell in love with Zelda Sayre, daughter of
  an Alabama Supreme Court judge.
• He was 21 she was 18
• After being discharged from the Army in 1919,
  Fitzgerald went to New York to seek his fortune
  so that he could marry Zelda. By day, he worked
  in an advertising agency, and by night, he wrote
  stories, submitting them to magazines. For his
  efforts, he collected nothing but rejection
  slips.
• She broke off their engagement in 1919 because
  she was unwilling to live on Scotts small salary.

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Literary Career Beginnings

• June 1919 Fitzgerald returns to St. Paul, MN to
  rewrite his novel, This Side of Paradise.
• In the fall of that year, he begins writing
  stories in mass-circulation magazines.
• He wrote many stories for the Saturday Evening
  Post describing the free-thinking flappers of the
  1920s.

8
Overnight Fame

• March 26, 1920 This Side of Paradise is
  published, making the 24 year-old Fitzgerald
  famous almost overnight.
• Fitzgerald was twenty-three years old. He called
  it the story of the youth of our generation.
  Considered daring and intellectual, This Side of
  Paradise was a smashing success and an immediate
  bestseller. Fitzgerald was perceived as the
  style-setter for the times, and he achieved
  celebrity status.
• One week later, he marries Zelda Sayre in New
  York.

9
Extravagant Living

• Scott Zelda begin to live as young celebrities,
  socializing and drinking heavily.
• They take their first trip to Europe in 1921.
• October 1921 Their first and only child,
  Frances Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald is born.

10
Fitzgeralds life in the 1920s was a mirror to
events occurring nationally during that decade.
The Roaring Twenties, also commonly referred to
as The Jazz Age, was a time of challenge to the
established order, of personal indulgence, and
even self-destructive excess. Fitzgerald was its
self-proclaimed spokesman and symbol.
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Much has been written about Zelda and her effect
on Fitzgeralds career. She was an aspiring
dancer, she craved attention, and she had
expensive taste. She also suffered from mental
illness (schizophrenia, nervous
breakdowns). While this was an era of
Prohibition, Fitzgerald and Zelda drank alcohol
publicly and partied like there was no tomorrow.
Their tastes were for life in New Yorks
luxurious Plaza Hotel, expensive and gigantic
cars, country homes on Long Island or in
Connecticut, and villas in France.
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They spent money as fast as Fitzgerald could make
it. In fact, they spent more than he could make,
and they found themselves in debt. Fitzgerald
was to spend the rest of his life in a futile
struggle to make ends meet.
In 1922, Fitzgerald published The Beautiful and
the Damned. This novel delineated the
self-indulgence and destruction of Anthony and
Gloria Patch and was based on the lives of
Fitzgerald and Zelda, who were known for their
glamorous and unsettled lives.
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Early Stumblings

• Fall, 1922 The young family moves to Great
  Neck, NY, expecting to earn a lot of money from
  Scotts play, The Vegetable.
• 1923 The play bombs, and Scott has to write
  short stories to get out of debt.
• Scotts drinking increases. He and Zelda fight
  often.

14
Gatsby is Born

• Spring 1924 The Fitzgeralds go to France.
• Summer 1924 Scott starts writing The Great
  Gatsby. Zelda has a relationship with a French
  pilot.
• Winter 1924-25 The Fitzgerald's go to Rome
  where Scott revises Gatsby.
• April 1925. Gatsby is published. Critical
  reviews are positive, but sales remain low.
• Novel invites the reader to enter the Jazz Age
  fast cars, wild parties, and shady business
  dealings.
• Second in the Modern Library's
• list of the 100 Best Novels of
• the 20th Century

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Two collections of short stories Flappers and
Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age
(1922) were his next publications. They were
judged harshly by critics, motivating Fitzgerald
to redirect his efforts.
Fitzgerald made a conscious effort to concentrate
on creating serious, even tragic works that
addressed broad historical and social issues.
Fitzgeralds new sense of vocation, his greater
personal maturity, his increasingly complex sense
of his eras place in world history, and his
growing awareness of the technical and stylistic
capabilities of the modern novel resulted in The
Great Gatsby.
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Fitzgerald and the Expatriates

• During the mid 1920s in Paris, Fitzgerald
  becomes part of the group of expatriate American
  writers which included Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude
  Stein, and Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot.
• Dubbed The Lost Generation.

17
Further Estrangement

• During the 1920s, Scott and Zeldas relationship
  continues to be strained due to his drinking and
  her mental instability. They live in Paris, the
  Riviera, and a mansion near Wilmington, DE.
• Even though Fitzgerald earns about 4,000 per
  story (equal to about 40,000 today), he and
  Zelda continue to run into debt.

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1930s

• The Fitzgerald's rent a house in Montgomery, AL
  in 1931. Scott makes an unsuccessful trip to
  Hollywood Zelda suffers a mental breakdown in
  1932 and is hospitalized.
• 1936-37 Scott drinks, gets into more debt, and
  lives in hotels near Asheville, NC. Zelda enters
  a nearby hospital.

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The Last Years

• Summer 1937 Fitzgerald goes to Hollywood with a
  screenwriting contract earning 1,000/ week.
• Despite earning 91,000 from MGM, he is unable to
  save any money.
• 1938 He falls in love with Sheilah Graham, a
  movie columnist.
• Dec 21, 1940 Fitzgerald dies of a heart attack
  in Grahams apartment.
• 1948 Zelda dies in a fire at Highland Hospital.

20
Fitzgeralds Death
On December 21, 1940 -- the Winter Solstice --
the author F. Scott Fitzgerald jolted to his feet
from a green armchair, grasped hold of a marble
mantlepiece, and fell down dead of a massive
heart attack. He was forty-four years old. His
woman companion of three-and-a half years ran out
into the hallway and began knocking frantically
on doors of their small Hollywood apartment
building on Laurel Avenue, just south of Sunset
Boulevard, crying desperately for help. She
refused to accept that Scott was dead, even later
when the ambulance came, and a fire engine also,
and a fireman stood over the body and shook his
head. The name of the woman was Sheilah Graham,
Fitzgerald's last heroine -- a young, pretty
Hollywood newspaper columnist. --Robert
Westbrook, son of Sheilah Graham
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Fitzgeralds Legacy

• Although Fitzgeralds drinking gave him a
  reputation as an irresponsible writer, he was a
  painstaking reviser.
• While he endured a lot of criticism just after
  his death, his reputation grew in the 1960s.
• Today, he is considered one of the great American
  novelists, and The Great Gatsby is considered his
  masterpiece.

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Enduring Associations

• Fitzgerald has become identified with the
  extravagant living of the Jazz Age
• It was an age of miracles, it was an age
  of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an
  age of satire.
• --F. Scott Fitzgerald
• He felt that aspiration and idealism defined
  America and its people.
• His writing style is known for being clear,
  lyrical, and witty.

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• Sources
• www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html
• www.orionmcs1.freeservers.com/Fitzgerald-1.html
• www.rarebookonline.com/Fax_Jackets/thissideofparad
  ise.jpg
• www.born-today.com/Today/09-24.htm
• www.zeldathemusical.com/fitzgeralds/index.asp
• www.planetbunky.com/illustrations/zelda.html
• www.ellisparkerbutler.info/epb/pic/v07/saturday_ev
  ening_post_1918_11_16_a.jpg
• www.riverwalk.org/proglist/showpromo/1927_heart.ht
  m