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Who Was F. Scott Fitzgerald? Get to Know the Legendary Writer


F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald, photographed for “The World’s Work” in June of 1921. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Community area)

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his spouse Zelda had been the darlings of the Jazz Age—late nights, plenty of liquor, and brilliant wit to match. The youthful creator observed early achievement but struggled in later lifetime in a remarkable parallel to the study course of American history, which fell from the glowing roaring twenties into the Terrific Despair and Earth War II.

Fitzgerald dreamed of remaining a intimate figure from a youthful age. Soon after his demise, his legacy produced into one particular of melancholic genius. In becoming just one of the most well known writers of the 20th century, the information of his short nevertheless intriguing life are frequently neglected.

Read through on to discover the story behind one particular of America’s literary heroes.

 

Early Daily life of F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald Writer

The author photographed in uniform in 1917 he was enlisted but under no circumstances sent overseas. (Picture: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He spent his formative several years in the metropolitan areas of Buffalo and Syracuse in upstate New York as his father labored for Procter & Gamble. For the duration of Fitzgerald’s teenager several years, the relatives relocated as soon as much more to Saint Paul. Scott—as he was known—attended Catholic faculties his overall childhood. At age 13, he was transported off to boarding faculty in New Jersey, wherever a person of the priests encouraged his burgeoning expertise for producing.

In 1913, Fitzgerald attended Princeton University, exactly where he became a member of the University Cottage Club—one of the prestigious (if not strange) feeding on golf equipment at Princeton. At the university, Fitzgerald wrote for a variety of campus publications and even managed to complete a novel. Though rejected by Scribner, the publisher gave encouraging opinions to the young creator. Inspite of this positive outlook, Fitzgerald’s grades tanked, and he ultimately dropped out altogether in 1917.

 

The Writer as a Youthful Guy

Zelda Fitzgerald

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, née Sayre, circa 1921. (Photograph: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

As a young person, Fitzgerald was a somewhat melancholy romantic—much like his most well known character, Gatsby. At Princeton, the budding writer had been unfortunate in adore. His affections for the wealthy younger Ginevra King encouraged a lengthy string of really like letters which in the end guide to heartbreak. When he remaining Princeton, Fitzgerald joined the army as Environment War I was continue to ongoing. At this time, he concluded The Romantic Egotist, an additional novel that did not get approved for publication. Whilst he was hardly ever transported to Europe, Fitzgerald ongoing to write although in support stateside. Apparently, he had specifically commissioned his personal uniform from Brooks Brothers to fit his intimate ideal of a dashing youthful soldier.

When on responsibility at a camp close to Montgomery, Alabama, Fitzgerald achieved the wealthy socialite Zelda Sayre. Enchanted by her, Fitzgerald tried to make himself deserving of her. He moved to New York Metropolis right after the conclude of the war where by his makes an attempt to discover a occupation in journalism had been deeply unsuccessful. His money failures ended their small-lived engagement.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Study St. Paul, Minnesota

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s research in St. Paul, Minnesota. Photographed for the historic American Structures Study. (Picture: Library of Congress Prints and Photos Division Washington)

Fitzgerald returned to his family members in Saint Paul and ongoing his quest to turn out to be a published novelist. He revised The Passionate Egotist and submitted it after more to publishers. This time, the do the job was approved and the first printing was unveiled in 1920 by Scribner. The retitled novel—This Facet of Paradise—did commercially perfectly. It also proved to Zelda that Fitzgerald could, in simple fact, be a economic achievement in his chosen area. The two ended up married that yr in New York.

 

Scott and Zelda

The Great Gatsby

“The Excellent Gatsby” cover at to start with publication in 1925. (Image: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

In the several years right after their relationship, the young pair became the symbol of 1920s New York. Substantially like the people of Fitzgerald’s novels, they were regarded for wild nights and copious amounts of alcohol. Fitzgerald’s increasing literary star was a perfect match for the roaring twenties, which was comprehensive of brilliant young matters.

In accordance to the present-day author Dorothy Parker, “They did equally seem as even though they had just stepped out of the solar their youth was placing. Everyone required to meet him.” Through their early yrs in New York, Fitzgerald actively worked on his future novel, The Attractive and the Damned. He also published a assortment of short stories titled Tales of the Jazz Age—a get the job done which is assumed to have coined the term for the period.

Just after having the New York social scene by storm, the Fitzgeralds moved to Paris in 1924. The writer began to get the job done on the novel which would become The Terrific Gatsby when also advertising small tales to magazines for quick-phrase income. Published in 1925, the now-famed novel was satisfied with only lukewarm enthusiasm. Daisy—the elusive socialite enjoy curiosity of the hero Jay Gatsby—is assumed to have been inspired by Fitzgerald’s romances with the upper-course Ginevra and Zelda.

When abroad, the Fitzgerald’s marital troubles (stemming in section from infidelity and liquor) came to a head. Zelda’s mental health troubles were also possible commencing to manifest. Upon the couple’s return to the United States in 1927, they briefly lived in Hollywood before settling in Delaware. Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1930, and the up coming couple of a long time observed her in remedy and even hospitalized.

In 1934, Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Evening was unveiled. The environment was various, nevertheless, from the roaring twenties. The Wonderful Depression still left tiny income for acquiring textbooks and tiny humor for the reminiscences of New York’s former golden boy. Experience the economical crunch, Fitzgerald’s consuming trouble worsened, top to medical and authorized troubles.

 

Fitzgerald’s Literary Legacy

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

“The Curious Scenario of Benjamin Button,” a small tale in in Collier’s Magazine, 1922. (Image: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

Fitzgerald’s literary achievements numbered four comprehensive novels, over 150 brief stories, and other unfinished pieces. His attempts to publish screenplays for Hollywood throughout the late 1930s have not long ago been given scholarly interest other unpublished stories have been discovered in the Princeton University Archives. Of his 4 novels, The Excellent Gatsby has develop into the most famous inspite of its lackluster preliminary launch. All through Earth War II, the book was exclusively printed and distributed to the armed forces overseas. Fitzgerald’s masterpiece turned a touchstone for afterwards writers this kind of as J.D. Salinger and T.S. Eliot.

A single of Fitzgerald’s brief tales observed a present day revival. “The Curious Circumstance of Benjamin Button” was posted in Collier’s magazine in 1922 the 2008 adaptation into a film starring Brad Pitt brought the tale to daily life once far more.

Fitzgerald’s other operates have been modified for stage and display quite a few times. This features The Previous Tycoon, Fitzgerald’s unfinished get the job done which was concluded just after his dying by his close friend Edmund Wilson. The allure of Fitzgerald has captivated Hollywood given that the 1950s, and the stars of just about every era relish the likelihood to enact his characters.

 

The Symbol of His Instances

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald Grave

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s gravesite in Rockville, Maryland. (Image: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

Fitzgerald passed away from a coronary heart assault in December of 1940 at age 44. Plagued by alcoholism for a great deal of his existence, his writings typically appear to replicate his have knowledge as a the moment-famous author. In 2015, a prolonged-lost tale was learned, entitled “Temperature.” The tale tells of a author having difficulties to adapt to a new lifetime in Hollywood as he self-destructs.

Potentially not strictly autobiographical, the tale even so sheds light-weight on the problems of the author’s later existence. Fitzgerald was component of the Misplaced Technology of World War I, youthful people whose worlds ended up upended by conflict and then financial devastation in 1929. As much as Fitzgerald’s work came to define the hedonism of the roaring twenties, his characters grew to become symbols of emotional turmoil and having difficulties to find which means in American society.

In a review of The Previous Tycoon, revealed in 1941 just after Fitzgerald’s demise, J. Donald Adams wrote for The New York Occasions:

“From the starting Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the matters and the folks that he understood. His early materials was trivial, and like the youngsters of whom he wrote, he was himself rudderless, borne swiftly alongside on a stream that empties into nothingness. But from the outset his perceptions were being keen, his emotion for words innate, his creativeness rapid and powerful. There was vitality in each individual line he wrote. But he experienced to get his personal values straight in advance of he could thoroughly do the do the job for which he was equipped, and the course of action took weighty toll of his vitality. Fitzgerald’s career is a tragic tale, but the finish is better than it may possibly have been. And I believe he will be remembered in his generation.”

It is this equilibrium of nothingness and vitality which gave performs like The Wonderful Gatsby their enduring high-quality. As the chronicler of an age which was briefly fantastic and then shed to the ravages of the Fantastic Melancholy and war, Fitzgerald captured something about the American practical experience that has remained related so quite a few decades afterwards.

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