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Born the third of five children in St. Paul, Minnesota
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Born in Montgomery, Alabama
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after failure in new york the head of the family decided to take them all back home
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At the age of 14, F. Scott Fitzgerald appears in print for the first time, with "The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage" in the student publication St. Paul Academy Now and Then
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Fitzgerald enters Princeton University with the Class of 1917. He soon meets men who will remain lifelong friends and influences, including the writers Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop.
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In his sophomore year Fitzgerald amps up his involvement in Princeton's literary scene, with contributions to the Princeton Tiger and the Triangle Club.
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Fitzgerald meets Ginevra King, his first serious love interest and a major influence on several female characters in his later fiction. They date but soon part ways.
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On academic probation and close to flunking out of Princeton, Fitzgerald takes a commission as an infantry second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and leaves school to report for duty at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He never graduates from Princeton. Soon after reporting for military duty, he begins a novel entitled The Romantic Egoist.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre meet at a country club dance in Montgomery, Alabama. A month later the publisher Scribners rejects The Romantic Egoist but, sensing promise in the young writer, encourages Fitzgerald to revise it and try again.
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World War I ends before Second Lieutenant Fitzgerald ever leaves the U.S. His failure to see foreign combat will forever be one of Fitzgerald's greatest regrets.
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Fitzgerald is discharged from the Army in February. Hoping to marry Zelda, he takes an advertising job in New York. In June Zelda breaks the engagement due to Fitzgerald's lack of fame and wealth. Fitzgerald quits advertising, moves in with his parents in St. Paul and goes to work rewriting The Romantic Egoist. Editor Maxwell Perkins of Scribners accepts the new manuscript—now entitled This Side of Paradise—on 16 September.
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This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald's first novel, is published. A week later, he and Zelda marry in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York
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Following the publication of his first short story collection Flappers and Philosophers, the Fitzgeralds move into an apartment on West 59th Street in New York City.
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The Fitzgeralds depart for their first trip to Europe. They spend three months in England, France and Italy before returning to the U.S.
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The Fitzgeralds' first and only child is born, a daughter named Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald. The next month the family moves to St. Paul and lives there until June
