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Born
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His mother was Mary McQuillan and his father Edward Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was a bright, handsome and ambitious boy, the pride and joy of his parents and especially his mother. -
Early Life
His parents sent him to the Newman School, a prestigious Catholic preparatory school in New Jersey. There, he met Father Sigourney Fay, who noticed his incipient talent with the written word and encouraged him to pursue his literary ambitions. -
Graduation
After graduating from the Newman School in 1913, Fitzgerald decided to stay in New Jersey to continue his artistic development at Princeton University. At Princeton, he firmly dedicated himself to honing his craft as a writer. -
U.S Army
He was placed on academic probation, and, in 1917, he dropped out of school to join the U.S. Army. Afraid that he might die in World War I with his literary dreams unfulfilled, in the weeks before reporting to duty, Fitzgerald hastily wrote a novel called The Romantic Egotist. -
End of the WWI
The war ended in November 1918, before Fitzgerald was ever deployed, and upon his discharge he moved to New York City hoping to launch a career in advertising lucrative enough to convince Zelda to marry him. -
Short stories
Beginning in 1920 and continuing throughout the rest of his career, Fitzgerald supported himself financially by writing great numbers of short stories for popular publications such as The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. Some of his most notable stories include "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Camel's Back" and "The Last of the Belles." -
This Side of Paradise
The novel was published in 1920 to glowing reviews and, almost overnight, turned Fitzgerald, at the age of 24, into one of the country's most promising young writers. -
First baby
One week after the novel's publication, he married Zelda Sayre in New York. They had one child, a daughter named Frances Scott Fitzgerald, born in 1921. -
Second novel
In 1922, Fitzgerald published his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, the story of the troubled marriage of Anthony and Gloria Patch. -
The Great Gatsby
Seeking a change of scenery to spark his creativity, in 1924, Fitzgerald moved to France, and it was there, in Valescure, that Fitzgerald wrote what would be credited as his greatest novel, The Great Gatsby. Published in 1925. -
Late 1920's
After he completed The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald's life began to unravel. Always a heavy drinker, he progressed steadily into alcoholism and suffered prolonged bouts of writer's block. His wife, Zelda, also suffered from mental health issues, and the couple spent the late 1920s moving back and forth between Delaware and France. -
Breakdown
His wife suffered another breakdown and was treated at the Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Towson, Maryland, and that same year was admitted to a mental health clinic in Switzerland -
Tender is the Night
After years of toil, Fitzgerald finally published his fourth novel, Tender is the Night. Although Tender is the Night was a commercial failure and was initially poorly received due to its chronologically jumbled structure, it has since gained in reputation and is now considered among the great American novels. -
Hollywood
After another two years lost to alcohol and depression, in 1937 Fitzgerald attempted to revive his career as a screenwriter and freelance storywriter in Hollywood. -
The Love of the Last Tycoon
He began work on another novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, in 1939. -
Death
He had completed over half the manuscript of The Love of the Last Tycoon, when he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44, in Hollywood, California. -
Since his death
Fitzgerald has gained a reputation as one of the pre-eminent authors in the history of American literature due almost entirely to the enormous posthumous success of The Great Gatsby. Perhaps the quintessential American novel, as well as a definitive social history of the Jazz Age, -
Generation
The Great Gatsby went on to become required reading for virtually every American high school student, and has had a transportive effect on generation after generation of readers.
