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F. Scott Fitzgerald was born
His father was a salesman and his mother inherited a successful Minnesota grocery store. The "F Scott" in his name stands for one of his distant cousins who wrote a poem that became the national anthem. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald started at the Newman School
Shortly after moving to St. Paul, his parents sent him to the Newman School, a prestigious Catholic school located in New Jersey. While he attended school there, he met Father Sigourney Fay who discovered his talent for writing and encouraged him to pursue it as a profession. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald decided to attend Princeton
At Princeton, he dedicated himself to perfecting and crafting his writing. He wrote for Princeton's Triangle Club musicals, Princeton Tiger magazines, and Nassau Literary Magazine. He was focused so much on his writing, that he let his coursework slip and eventually was placed on academic probation. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald joined the U.S. Army and left Princeton
He was afraid that he would die in WW1 without writing any novels, so he hastily wrote The Romantic Egotist. Although it was rejected, the publisher still encouraged him to submit more work. He was a second lieutenant in the infantry and was assigned to Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama. The war ended in 1918 before Fitzgerald was ever deployed to Europe. In Alabama, he met a girl named Zelda, but she broke off the engagement because he could not support her financially. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald got engaged to Zelda
After moving to New York to try to convince Zelda he could financially support her, Zelda didn't buy it and left him. He moved home and perfected and published the novel The Romantic Egoist, and Zelda came running back to get engaged. Just one week after publication, the couple was happily engaged and living in New York. One year later, Zelda gave birth to their child named Frances Scott Fitzgerald. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his first two novels
This was the turning point in his career because it brought lots of wealth. He became known as a playboy who drank too much alcohol. His main source of income was from short stories he wrote for newspapers and magazines. In 1922, he wrote a second novel called The Beautiful and the Damned. In this novel he mocked the Jazz Age, which confirmed his membership in the Lost Generation. Zelda and Scott lived beyond their lifestyle and had to constantly take loans. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald moves to Great Neck, Long Island
The Fitzgerald family rented a house in Great Neck, Long Island from 1922-1924. During their time there, Fitzgerald wrote a few short stories for magazines and a very unsuccessful play called The Vegetable. This was the only attempt he made to become a successful playwright, but after the terrible opening night of the play, it was not performed again. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald writes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Fitzgerald said that this was "the funniest story ever written" and "one of my two favorite stories." It is about a man who is born old and dies as a baby. This was an important short story that he wrote because it is a fantasy. Fitzgerald wrote many short stories because he couldn't afford to take the time to write full-length novels. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda move to Paris
After WW1, like many American writers, Fitzgerald moved to Paris. In Paris, he met Ernest Hemingway. During his residency in Paris from 1924-1931, he wrote the Great Gatsby, which is claimed to be his best novel that he wrote. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Tender is the Night
In 1932, his wife Zelda wrote an autobiography called Save me the Waltz. Scott was angry that she had exposed the ups and downs of their life together, so he set off to write his own autobiography. In 1934, he published the novel and named it Tender is the Night. The novel was about a psychiatrist married to a schizophrenic and it was commercially unsuccessful. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter
In 1937, Zelda was put in a hospital in North Carolina. Scott left her and moved to Hollywood. He wanted to become a screenwriter to help with his financial problems and debts. In 1939, he started writing his final novel called Love of the Last Tycoon. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald dies
A year after starting the novel Love of the Last Tycoon, Scott dies of a heart attack. He was only 44, and considered his literary profession as a failure at the time of his death. Today, he is considered to be one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and his novels are read around the world.
