F. Scott Fitzgerald

Overview

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), widely known simply as Scott Fitzgerald, was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age, a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Born into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in New York state. He attended Princeton University where he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Owing to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 to join the United States Army during World War I. 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). The novel became a cultural sensation and cemented his reputation as one of the eminent writers of the decade. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), 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. His third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), 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 (1934). Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his works during 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 in 1940, at 44. His friend Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished fifth novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's death. Wilson described Fitzgerald's style: “romantic, but also cynical; he is bitter as well as ecstatic; astringent as well as lyrical. He casts himself in the role of playboy, yet at the playboy he incessantly mocks. He is vain, a little malicious, of quick intelligence and wit, and has the Irish gift for turning language into something iridescent and surprising.”

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Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

• Born in 1900 in Montgomery, Alabama, to a wealthy Southern family. • Became known for her beauty and high spirits. • After she married writer Scott, became famous as America’s first true flapper. • She and Scott were the enfants terribles of the Jazz Age. • Infidelities and bitter recriminations undermined their marriage. • Her mental health began to deteriorate during her mid-20s. • Had suicidal and homicidal tendencies, which required psychiatric care. • Diagnosed with schizophrenia (bipolar). • While institutionalized at Johns Hopkins Hospital she wrote Save Me the Waltz (1932). • Garnered mostly negative reviews and experienced poor sales. Led her to pursue her other interests, especially her work as an artist. • Her recurrent voluntary institutionalization for mental illness interrupted any attempts at a creative life. • March 1948: She died in a fire while sedated and locked in a room on the fifth floor of Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. • Her body was identified by her dental records and one of her slippers. • The fire had been a work of arson hospital employee. OVERVIEW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelda_Fitzgerald OVERVEIW: https://fscottfitzgeraldsociety.org/about-us-2/biography-zelda-fitzgerald/ OVERVIEW: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zelda-Fitzgerald ARTWORK: https://www.art.com/gallery/id--a539257/zelda-fitzgerald-posters.htm? ARTWORK: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/04/15/zelda-fitzgerald-art/ GRANDDAUGHTER OVERVIEW: https://lithub.com/zelda-fitzgerald-writer-muse-and-painter/ SAVE ME THE WALTZ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_Me_the_Waltz SAVE ME THE WALTZ: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/save-me-waltz-zelda-fitzgerald

Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald

• Born 1921 • Scottie attended Vassar College • Became a journalist and fiction writer for The Washington Post and The New Yorker, etc. • Prominent member of Democratic Party. • Married Lieutenant "Jack" Lanahan in 1943 /and/ after the war, he became a prominent Washington lawyer. • Couple became popular hosts in Washington society in the 1950s and 1960s. • Wrote and directed musical comedies about the Washington social scene. • Scottie and Jack had four children; divorced in 1967. • Married Clinton Smith. • 1973: legally separated. • Moved to Zelda's hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. • Devoted remainder of her life to voter outreach programs in Alabama. • Died from throat cancer in 1986. • Buried next to her parents in Rockville, Maryland. OVERVIEW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Scott_Fitzgerald HER PAPERS AT VASSAR: https://www.vassar.edu/stories/2017/170531-scottie-fitzgerald.html OBITUARY: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/19/obituaries/frances-scott-smith-writer-and-child-of-the-fitzgeralds.html

Lily Shiel (Sheilah Graham)

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham had a passionate, albeit tumultuous, love affair in Hollywood during the late 1930s. Graham, a successful gossip columnist, and Fitzgerald, a once-famous novelist battling alcoholism and financial woes, met in Hollywood and their relationship became a significant part of Fitzgerald's final years. Their romance was marked by Fitzgerald's struggles with alcohol, his attempts at sobriety, and the emotional complexities of their relationship, including rows about his anti-Semitism. Graham, in turn, was a driving force behind his work, including his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon See: https://jwa.org/weremember/graham-sheilah#