F. Scott Fitzgerald

1896- 1940

Novelist

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St Paul Minnesota. Fitzgerald grew up in a comfortable Catholic home and went to Catholic schools. He went to the Newman School for high school and then on to Princeton where he wrote his first novel. He dropped out Princeton to enlist in the army in 1917. After serving the army he worked for a short period in New York writing advertising copy, before returning to his parents home to finish This Side of Paradise which was published by Scribner, and was an immediate success, launching his career. Fitzgerald chronicled the moral lapses of the wealthy in his stories set in the era he termed "The Jazz Age."

A difficult marriage to the mentally unstable Zelda Sayre, coupled with his own problems (including alcohol abuse and financial setbacks), hindered his career progress to some extent, although he managed to write some of the most acclaimed literature of the century including The Great Gatsby (1925).