� Born in 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota
� Son of a father with claims to an aristocratic Maryland family. His mother was the daughter of a rich Irish immigrant
� The name �Scott� was named for an ancestor, Franciss Scott Key, the composer of The Star Spangled Banner.
� Scott was a spoiled boy and a failure at schoolwork
� He was good at daydreaming, writing stories and plays
� He entered Princeton in 1913
� In Princeton, he wrote one of the Triangle Club musical shows, contributed to the Nassau Literary Magazine, and befriended the serious writers Edmund Wilson and John Peal Bishop
� Fitzgerald left Princeton and registered into the Officer�s Training school when the U.S. entered the first World War in 1917
� He wanted to go to the French battlefields, but he was never sent overseas. Since he wasn�t sent, he began to work on a novel, The Romantic Egotist, which was turned down twice by Scribner�s
� When he was stationed at Camp Sheridon in Alabama, he fell deeply in love with Zelda Sayre
� Zelda turned him down only because Scott did not have money
� Now out of the army, Fitzgerald took a low paying job he hated; he sent his novel, rewritten and retitled This Side of Paradise, off to Scribner�s for the third time
� In 1919, Scribner�s agreed to publish it
� When it was published in 1920, it was a sensation
Taking aim at the American dream
� Zelda married Scott in April of that year, the newlyweds moved to New York and became the center of attention in parties where Scott had the time to tell his stories
� During the first years of the new decade he published two collections of stores and a second novel
� After a stay in France, they returned to St. Paul where their only daughter was born, her name Frances
� Scott announced to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scriber�s that he was going to write something new, more extraordinary, beautiful, simple, and intricately patterned, this ambition was The Great Gatsby the flawless masterpiece was published in 1925
� The central triumph of the book was is revelation of the rich in all their seductive luxury and heedlessness, accompanied by an implicit condemnation of their way of life
An Epitaph for the Jazz Age
� The Great Gatsby was some critical praise but it was a financial disappointment
� Scott had to work even harder to keep up with the high cost of his and Zelda�s international life
� He turned to Hollywood to write movie scripts
� In 1930 Zelda suffered a mental breakdown and spent the rest of her life in and out of asylums
� Hers was a search for both sanity and identity that seemed to have been devoured he Scott�s productiveness
� She aspired to be a dancer and a writer and in 1932 she produced her own novel, Save Me the Waltz, this was her thinly disguised account of her troubled marriage
� When the stock market crashed in 1929 it put an end to Fitzgerald�s era, and readers had lost interest in the problems of expatriates like Dick Diver.
� Tender is the Night is an epitaph for the Jazz age it was Fitzgerald�s epitaph as well
� After its publication he struggled with mounting debts, failing health, drinking, and depression
� Zelda was hospitalized