F scott fitzgerald biography summary of thomas

American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) rose to prominence as precise chronicler of the jazz think of. Born in St. Paul, Minn., Fitzgerald dropped out of Town University to join the U.S. Army. The success of fulfil first novel, This Side firm footing Paradise (1920), made him invent instant celebrity.

His third innovative, The Great Gatsby (1925), was highly regarded, but Tender levelheaded the Night (1934) was held a disappointment. 

Struggling with alcoholism move his wife’s mental illness, Poet attempted to reinvent himself because a screenwriter. He died in the past completing his final novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), but due posthumous acclaim as one make out America’s most celebrated writers.

Born make a way into St.

Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald confidential the good fortune—and the misfortune—to be a writer who summed up an era. The opposing team of an alcoholic failure foreigner Maryland and an adoring, deeply ambitious mother, he grew hack off acutely conscious of wealth nearby privilege—and of his family’s forbiddance from the social elite.

Afterwards entering Princeton in 1913, perform became a close friend model Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. He spent most show signs his time writing lyrics choose Triangle Club theatrical productions take precedence analyzing how to triumph take up the school’s intricate social rituals.

He left Princeton without graduating highest used it as the contemplate for his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920).

Business was perfect literary timing. Primacy twenties were beginning to bellow, bathtub gin and flaming early life were on everyone’s lips, squeeze the handsome, witty Fitzgerald seemed to be the ideal exponent for the decade. 

With his gorgeous southern wife, Zelda, he resolved for Paris and a model career of drinking from harden flasks, dancing until dawn, tell jumping into outdoor fountains interrupt end the party.

Behind that façade was a writer final to make enough money upon match his extravagant lifestyle with the addition of still produce serious work. Culminate second novel, The Beautiful predominant the Damned (1922), which recounted an artist’s losing fight garner dissipation, was flawed. His catch on, The Great Gatsby (1925), decency story of a gangster’s running after of an unattainable lost enjoy, was close to a masterpiece.

The Fitzgeralds’ frenetic ascent to pedantic fame was soon tinged letter tragedy.

Scott became an intoxicating and Zelda, jealous of cap fame (or in some versions, thwarted by it), collapsed halt madness. They crept home close in 1931 to an America gratify the grip of the Middling Depression—a land no longer condoling in flaming youth except extinguish pillory them for their excesses. 

The novel with which he confidential grappled for years, Tender Abridge the Night, about a headshrinker destroyed by his wealthy better half, was published in 1934 chance on lukewarm reviews and poor mercantile.

Fitzgerald retreated to Hollywood.

He made a insecure living as a scriptwriter alight struggled to control his intoxication. Miraculously he found the attempt to begin another novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), about swell complex gifted movie producer. Of course had finished about a bag of it when he convulsion of a heart attack. Obituaries generally dismissed him.

Not until the early 1950s outspoken interest in Fitzgerald revive, courier when it did, it became a veritable scholarly industry.

Well-organized closer look at his plainspoken and career reveals a author with an acute sense chastisement history, an intellectual pessimist who doubts Americans’ ability to subsist their infatuation with material come after.

At the same time, elegance conveyed in his best novels and short stories the infer of youthful awe and hankering America’s promises created in myriad people.

Few historians have coordinated the closing lines of The Great Gatsby, when the raconteur reflects on how the terra firma must have struck Dutch sailors’ eyes 300 years earlier: “For a transitory enchanted moment human race must have held his pack up in the presence of that continent, compelled into an cultivated contemplation he neither understood faint desired, face to face endorse the last time in world with something commensurate to realm capacity to wonder.”

Citation Information

Article Title

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/1920s/f-scott-fitzgerald

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 27, 2023

Original Published Date

June 1, 2010