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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. -
His father, Edward, was form Maryland and his mother, Mary McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. Both Fitzgerald's parents were Catholic.
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Francis' father, Edward Fitzgerald, failed as a manufacturer of wicker furniture and instead became a salesman for Procter & Gamble in upstate New York. after being dismissed, Francis, twelve at the time, returned to St. Paul. -
Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy where his first writing to appear in print was a detective story in the school newspaper -
From 1911-1913, Fitzgerald attended a Catholic prep school in New Jersey where he met Father Sigourney Fay who encouraged his ambitions for personal distinction and achievement.
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Fitzgerald neglected his studies for his literary apprenticeship, though he wrote scripts and lyrics for the Princeton Triangle Club musicals and contributed to the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and Nassau Literary Magazine. -
Placed on academic probation and unlikely to graduate, Fitzgerald joined the army and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. He was convinced that he would die in the war so he decided to wrote the novel, "The Romantic Egotist". -
Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan where he fell in love with a celebrated belle, Zelda Sayre. The romance Fitzgerald felt intensified the hopes of success regarding his novel but was soon rejected by Scribners. -
The war ended be fore he was to be sent overseas; after his discharge he went to New York City to seek fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait and live on his small salary, Sayre broke their engagement. -
Fitzgerald quit his job and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel This Side of Paradise where it was accepted by editor Maxwell Perkins of Scribners in September. -
In the fall-winter of 1919, Fitzgerald commenced his career as a writer of stories in multiple mass-circulation magazines. He eventually interrupted work on his novels to write popular fiction for the rest of his life. -
This Side of Paradise gets published and made the 14 year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and nearly a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. They were seen as young celebrities with an extravagant life. -
The Fitzgeralds got an apartment in New York City where he wrote his second novel, Beautiful and Damned, Zelda soon became pregnant and settled in St. Paul for the birth od their only child, Frances Scott Fitzgerald. -
The Fitzgeralds expected to become abundant from his play, the Vegetable but things weren't looking too great. this led them to move to Great Neck, Long Island in order to be closer to Broadway. -
Fitzgerald started writing his way out of debt with short stories, his drinking increased an he became an alcoholic. Though he turned to alcohol, he wrote sober. -
The Fitzgeralds went to France in the spring and there he wrote the Great Gatsby during the summer and fall. Though they seemed to be doing good, Francis and Zelda's marriage was falling apart. -
The Fitzgeralds spent the winter in Rome where he revised The Great Gatsby and the novel was published in April.
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The Fitzgeralds stayed in France until the end of 1926, going back and forth between Paris and the Riviera. Fitzgerald was making little progress on his fourth novel and during these years, Zelda's behavior became increasingly eccentric. -
Zelda Fitzgerald commenced ballet training with the intention of becoming a professional dancer. Her intense ballet work damaged her health and she suffered her first breakdown. -
Zelda was treated at Paragons clinic in Switzerland while Francis lives in Swiss hotels. He stopped working his novels and turned to writing short stories to pay for psychiatric treatment. -
Zelda Fitzgerald suffered a relapse and entered Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. There she spent the rest of her life as a resident/outpatient of sanitariums. -
After Baltimore, Fitzgerald could not maintain a home for Scottie leading her to get into a boarding school where the Obers became her surrogate family. Fitzgerald became a concerned father by mail. -
Fitzgerald went to Hollywood solo in summer with a six month Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer screenwriting contract for $1,000 a week. -
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in Graham's apartment. -
F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing he was a failure, he seemed destined for literary obscurity.