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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
September 24, 1896
Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S. -
He attended Princeton University but he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I.
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While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of financial prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after he published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). -
He published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise. The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade. -
Frances Scott Fitzgerald, which is his daughter was born one year after they got married -
Publishing his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, propelled him further into the cultural elite. -
To maintain his affluent lifestyle, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway.
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His third novel, The Great Gatsby, received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby is now hailed by some literary critics as the "Great American Novel". -
Following the deterioration of his wife's mental health and her placement in a mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his final novel, Tender Is the Night. -
Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works amid the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter. -
While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion before his death -
After a long struggle with alcoholism, he attained sobriety only to die of a heart attack, he died (aged 44 in Los Angeles, California, U.S.
His resting place is Saint Mary's Cemetery
Rockville, Maryland, U.S. -
His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon, after Fitzgerald's death. -
A new edition was published as The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.