Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota to a middle-class family.
Fitzgerald, who often went by “Scott Fitzgerald” was named after a distant cousin, Francis Scott Key, who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
His mother, Molly, was the daughter of Irish immigrants who became successful in the grocery business.
His father, Edward, was from the Baltimore area.
Edward’s cousin twice removed was Mary Surrat, who was hanged for her involvement in the assassination plot to kill Abraham Lincoln. She owned a boarding house frequented by John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators. Surrat maintained her innocence until her death, and the case against her remains controversial. Her son, John Surrat, was acquitted in a later trial.
Fitzgerald was raised primarily in Buffalo, and Syracuse, New York. The family moved to Buffalo after his father’s business in St. Paul failed a year after Fitzgerald’s birth. His father, Edward, became a salesman for Procter & Gamble in Buffalo. After he was fired in 1908, Edward became unemployable because of his alcoholism. The family returned to St. Paul, and Molly supported them with an inheritance from her family.
At thirteen, one of Fitzgerald’s stories was printed in his school newspaper. Recognizing his potential, his parents sent him to a private prep school in New Jersey where he was encouraged to become a writer.
After graduating from The Newman School, Fitzgerald attended Princeton University.
During Christmas break of his sophomore year, Eighteen-year-old Fitzgerald met and fell in love with sixteen-year-old Generva King, a wealthy socialite in St. Paul. King attended a private academy in Connecticut, so their courtship continued after the break. After King was expelled for flirting with boys from her dorm room window, Fitzgerald still wanted to continue the relationship. Fitzgerald was from the middle-class. The King’s were part of the wealthy upper-class. King’s father ended the relationship telling Fitzgerald, “Poor boys shouldn’t think of marrying rich girls.”
Devastated when King decided to end their relationship, Fitzgerald joined the U.S. Army in 1917 to fight in World War I. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and stationed at Fort Leavenworth under the command of future general and U. S. President Captain Dwight Eisenhower to await deployment to the Western Front where Fitzgerald hoped to die in combat.
Fitzgerald disliked Eisenhower and his rigid authority. Despite his prior death wish, Fitzgerald didn’t want to die without having a novel published. He wrote the manuscript, The Romantic Egotist in three months. It was rejected by Scribner’s, but the reviewer was so impressed with Fitzgerald’s writing style, he advised him to make changes and resubmit the manuscript.
By June 1918, Fitzgerald was still getting over King’s rejection, but no longer wished to die in combat. While stationed in Alabama he started dating again and eventually met Zelda Sayre, a Southern socialite. Sayre was one of the most celebrated and admired debutantes in Montgomery, Alabama. Three days after Ginerva King married a wealthy Chicago businessman, he professed his love for Zelda.
Fitzgerald and his unit were sent to Cape Mills, a base in Long Island, New York, but the war ended before they were deployed. He was sent back to Montgomery before being discharged from the Army.
He and Zelda reconnected and began a sexual relationship. Though Fitzgerald originally didn’t intend to marry Zelda, they considered themselves engaged. Zelda refused to make their relationship permanent until he became successful.
Fitzgerald moved to New York City and struggled to find work as a journalist. He eventually began writing advertising “copy” and working feverishly on his short stories and novels in his free time.
In 1919, he proposed to Zelda, and she accepted. Her family was opposed to the marriage. Fitzgerald was Catholic and his finances were unstable. The Sayres were wealthy Episcopalians. He often drank to excess. Fitzgerald’s friends felt Zelda was an unsuitable match because of her unpredictable temperament.
Zelda broke off their engagement after Fitzgerald’s works were rejected over 120 times. During this period, only the short story, “Babes in the Woods” was accepted for publication. Fitzgerald received $30 for it. The small raise he received from his advertising job wasn’t sufficient to allow him to afford more than his single room in Manhattan’s West Side.
Defeated, Fitzgerald returned home to St. Paul where he lived on the top floor of his parent’s home. He stopped partying and drinking and became recommitted to writing. He revised The Romantic Egotist and renamed it This Side of Paradise. During this time, he also worked repairing car roofs. When he received the telegram from Scribner’s accepting his manuscript for publication, an ecstatic Fitzgerald ran into the streets and flagged down passing motorists to share his big news.
On March 26, 1920, his novel debuted and became an instant success selling over 40,000 copies in the first year. Critics hailed it as the best American novel of the year, and one of the greatest novels about the college experience ever written. Fitzgerald became the new daring of the writing community. Suddenly, newspapers and magazines were clamoring to print the stories they had previously rejected.
Zelda resumed their engagement since Fitzgerald was now able to afford her lavish lifestyle. Though Fitzgerald resented Zelda’s previous disregard for him, he went through with the marriage because he couldn’t stand the thought of her with anyone else.
It was an unhealthy start to what would become a torturous union.
Fitzgerald followed up his debut novel with The Beautiful and the Damned. It was not as popular, but the writing was more subtle and sophisticated indicating his maturity as a novelist.
In 1925, Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby. For this work, he refined his writing style and concentrated on an economy of words, polishing every sentence. His peers hailed him as one of the greatest writers of his time. Despite these accolades, Fitzgerald never won any literary awards during his lifetime.
Nine years later, Fitgerald published Tender is the Night (one of my favorite works). By this time works about the upper middle class were unpopular because of the Great Depression. He was criticized for not dealing with the political issues of the day in his works.
Several critics still praised his artistry calling Tender is the Night the best American novel since The Great Gatsby.
Fitzgerald’s novels garnered praise for their evolving artistry; however his short stories were criticized. Many critics and fellow authors accused him of selling out the quality of his work for quick sales to newspapers and magazines.
Hemingway and Fitzgerald were friends and rivals. Hemingway thought Fitgerald was brilliant, but declared that Fitzgerald ruined many of his short stories by changing them to suit what the media was willing to buy. He blamed Zelda’s extravagant lifestyle for what he considered the “whoring” of his friend’s talents.
There’s a grain of truth in that statement. The Fitzgerald’s extravagant lifestyle and partying was expensive. After the birth of their daughter, Frances, Zelda became more unstable. She often teetered between euphoria and deep depression sometimes becoming suicidal.
Fitzgerald by this time was a functioning alcoholic. He would drink at night, and rise early to write short stories to support his family. Once that was done, he worked on his next novel, and spent time with Frances.
Fitzgerald and his wife had a tumultuous relationship. There were rumors of infidelity on both sides. Zelda tried writing, but her work was compared unfavorably to her husband’s. She did have limited success writing short articles for magazines, but only after her husband began editing them for her. She tried painting and dancing, but never seemed to find success as anything but a debutante/socialite.
Eventually, her mental health deteriorated to the point that she was committed to a psychiatric facility. She was initially diagnosed with schizophrenia, but that diagnosis has been changed to bipolar disorder. She was in and out of care for many years, but Fitzgerald never divorced her and always paid for her to have the best of care.
Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and tried unsuccessfully to become a screenwriter. He lived with columnist Shelia Graham. After finally getting sober, he died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 44.
He was working on his fifth novel, The Last Tycoon. His friend, Edmund Wilson edited and published the unfinished novel in 1941.
Happy Birthday, F. Scott Fitzgerald!