F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays | GradeSaver Fitzgerald, F. Scott Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a Jazz Age novelist and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest twentieth-century American writers. Born on September 24, 1896, he was the only son of an aristocratic father and a provincial, working-class mother. He was the product of two divergent traditions: while his father's family included the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner" (after whom Fitzgerald was named), his mother's family was, in Fitzgerald's own words, "straight 1850 potato-famine Irish." As a result of this contrast, he was exceedingly ambivalent toward the notion of the American dream: for him, it was at once vulgar and dazzlingly promising. Like the central character of The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald had an intensely romantic imagination; he once called it "a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life." The events of Fitzgerald's own life can be seen as a struggle to realize those promises. He attended both St.

Paul Academy (1908-10) and Newman School (1911-13), where his intensity and outsized enthusiasm made him unpopular with the other students. Later, at Princeton University, he came close to the brilliant success of which he dreamed. He became part of the influential Triangle Club, a dramatic organization whose members were taken from the cream of society. He also became a prominent figure in the literary life of the university and made lifelong friendships with Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. Despite these social coups, Fitzgerald struggled academically, and he eventually flunked out of Princeton. In November 1917, he joined the army. While stationed at Camp Sheridan (near Montgomery, Alabama), he met Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge, and the two fell deeply in love. Fitzgerald needed to improve his dismal financial circumstances, however, before he and Zelda could marry. At the first opportunity, he left for New York, determined to make his fortune in the great city. Instead, he was forced to take a menial advertising job at $90 per month. Zelda broke their engagement, and Fitzgerald retreated to St. Paul, Minnesota.

There, he rewrote a novel that he had begun at Princeton. In the spring of 1920 the novel, This Side of Paradise , was published. Though today's readers might find its ideas dated, This Side of Paradise was a revelation to Fitzgerald's contemporaries. It was regarded as a rare glimpse into the morality and immorality of America's youth, and it made Fitzgerald famous. Suddenly, the author could publish not only in prestigious literary magazines such as Scribner's but also high-paying, popular publications including The Saturday Evening Post. Flush with his new wealth and fame, Fitzgerald finally married Zelda. The celebrated columnist Ring Lardner christened them "the prince and princess of their generation." Though the Fitzgeralds reveled in their notoriety, they also found it frightening, a fact which is perhaps represented in the ending of Fitzgerald's second novel. This novel, The Beautiful and Damned, was published two years later, and tells the story of a handsome young man and his beautiful wife, who gradually deteriorate into careworn middle age while they wait for the young man to inherit a large fortune. In a predictable ironic twist, they only receive their inheritance when it is too late.

To escape this grim fate, the Fitzgeralds (together with their daughter, Frances, who was born in 1921) moved in 1924 to the Riviera, where they became part of a group of wealthy American expatriates whose style was largely determined by Gerald and Sara Murphy. Fitzgerald described this society in his last completed novel, Tender is the Night , and modeled its hero on Gerald Murphy. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald's reputation as a heavy drinker tarnished his reputation in the literary world; he was viewed as an irresponsible writer despite his painstaking revisions numerous drafts of his work. Shortly after their relocation to France, Fitzgerald completed his most famous and respected novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). Fitzgerald's own divided nature can be seen in the contrast between the novel's hero, Jay Gatsby, and its narrator, Nick Carraway. The former represents the naive Midwesterner dazzled by the possibilities of the American dream; the latter represents the compassionate Princeton gentleman who cannot help but regard that dream with suspicion.

The Great Gatsby may be described as the most profoundly American novel of its time; Fitzgerald connects Gatsby's dream, his "Platonic conception of himself," with the aspirations of the founders of America. A year later, Fitzgerald published a collection of short stories, All the Sad Young Men. This book marks the end of the most productive period of Fitzgerald's life; the next decade was full of chaos and misery. Fitzgerald began to drink excessively, and Zelda began a slow descent into madness. In 1930, she suffered her first mental breakdown. Her second breakdown, from which she never fully recovered, came in 1932. Throughout the 1930s the Fitzgeralds fought an ultimately unsuccessful battle to save their marriage. This struggle was tremendously debilitating for Fitzgerald; he later said that he "left [his] capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda's sanitarium." He did not finish his next novel, Tender is the Night, until 1934.

It is the story of a psychiatrist who marries one of his patients, and, as she slowly recovers, she exhausts his vitality until he is "a man used up." This book, the last that Fitzgerald ever completed, was considered technically faulty and was commercially unsuccessful. It has since gained a reputation, however, as Fitzgerald's most moving work. Crushed by the failure of Tender is the Night and his despair over Zelda, Fitzgerald became an incurable alcoholic. In 1937, however, he managed to acquire work as a script-writer in Hollywood. There he met and fell in love with Sheilah Graham, a famous Hollywood gossip columnist. For the rest of his life, though he frequently had drunken spells in which he became bitter and violent, Fitzgerald lived quietly with Ms. Graham. Occasionally he went east to visit Zelda or his daughter Frances, who entered Vassar College in 1938. In October 1939, Fitzgerald began a novel about Hollywood titled The Last Tycoon. The career of its hero, Monroe Stahr, is based on that of the renowned Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg.

On December 21, 1940, Fitzgerald suffered a fatal heart attack, leaving the novel unfinished. Even in its half-completed state, The Last Tycoon is considered the equal of the rest of Fitzgerald's work for its intensity. Many of his short stories allowed Fitzgerald to explore ideas and situations which were later reworked in to his longer fiction. Descriptions of setting which were devised in Fitzgerald's 1922 story "Winter Dreams" became part of the detail of Daisy's home in The Great Gatsby. Similarly, Fitzgerald also used inspirations from his 1927 story "Jacob's Ladder" as character ideas for Tender Is the Night. Fitzgerald often rejected his short fiction as 'trash', saying that the stories he wrote were merely to fund the Fitzgerald's lavish lifestyle. His stories were indeed enough to sustain the Fitzgerald family - his highest single story fee was $4000. The stories were far from trash, however, and have been reproduced in collections many times. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was made in to a feature film in 2008. Study Guides on Works by F. Scott Fitzgerald F.

Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby – Library News Hub October 27, 2016 The Great Gatsby is seen by critics and the general public as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quintessential novel, and is the novel he is most famous for. It tells the story of a rich man named Jay Gatsby and his quest to regain a past love. As its most recent movie adaptation is currently playing in theaters, Special Collections invites you to take a look back on the novel and the man that created it. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota and named after his second cousin three times removed, the Francis Scott Key of national anthem fame. While on academic probation at Princeton, Fitzgerald enlisted in the army in 1917. In June 1918, he was assigned to a camp near Montgomery, Alabama, where he met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre. In late 1919, after being discharged from the army and quitting his job in advertising, Fitzgerald began his career of writing short stories for magazines and other publications, with The Saturday Evening Post becoming his best story market.

He published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in March 1920 and married Zelda Sayre soon after. His success and the extravagant lifestyle of the young couple soon earned him a reputation as a bit of a playboy. He also became known as a heavy drinker, though he always wrote sober. After the publication of his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, and the birth of his child, Frances Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald, in 1921, the Fitzgeralds moved to Long Island where F. Scott wrote short stories to cover the family's debt after his play, The Vegetable, failed to make it into production. The family moved to France in the spring of 1924 so that F. Scott would be able to focus on his newest project, the novel that would become The Great Gatsby. Before it became The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s novel went through many revisions and forms. Special Collections has in its possession a facsimile of one such early edition, entitled Trimalchio. This is an allusion to a Roman novel, The Satyricon by Petronius.

In this novel, Trimalchio is a freedman who has amassed power and wealth and shows this off by hosting exceedingly lavish dinner parties for his numerous guests. This copy includes correspondence between Fitzgerald and a man by the name of Perkins, Fitzgerald’s friend and an employee of his publishers, in which Perkins makes suggestions for revision and suggests using a different title (pictured below right). Shortly after this, Fitzgerald rewrote several aspects of his novel and reordered key scenes, such as the one where Gatsby’s past is illuminated. The Gatsby we know today comes in many different forms and editions. One of the more unique Gatsbys at Special Collections comes in the form of a fantastical graphic novel adaptation by Nicki Greenberg, in which Jay Gatsby is portrayed as a seahorse and the others as any number of creatures. There are also a number of more conventionally illustrated editions of The Great Gatsby in existence, such as the 1980 Limited Editions Club which is illustrated by artist Fred Meyer, whose recognizable style brings the Jazz Age to life on the page. Most people are familiar with The Great Gatsby after having spent some time studying it at either a high school or college level.

From Professor Lago’s collection, we have her copy of The Great Gatsby, which has been heavily annotated for use as a teaching tool. Her extensive notes comment on such key themes as morality and hope. On the page shown here, she notes the importance of color symbolism, among other things. In the years after The Great Gatsby was published, Fitzgerald began work on his fourth novel, Tender is the Night. Work on this novel was put on hold throughout the years due to Zelda Fitzgerald’s declining mental and physical health. During her stay in a clinic in Switzerland, F. Scott returned to writing short stories for income. He completed Tender is the Night in 1934, though it was ultimately a commercial failure. In the summer of 1937, Fitzgerald went to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. It was there that he began an affair with columnist Sheilah Graham. After MGM Studios dropped his contract at the end of 1938, he worked as a freelance script writer and continued writing short sories.

He began work on his last novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, in 1939 and had more than half of it written when he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940. Though Fitzgerald was not much of a commercial success during his lifetime, he is now considered to be the author of one of the “great American novels” and is esteemed for his accurate portrayals of the Jazz Age. Many of his works, including collections of his short stories, are available for use by patrons in the Reading Room of Special Collections. Bruccoli, Matthew J. "A Brief Life of Fitzgerald." Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, n.d. Web. 21 May 2013. . "Trimalchio." Trimalchio. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 May 2013. <~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Trimalchio.html>. F. Scott Fitzgerald - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss. F. Scott Fitzgerald F.

Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), American author wrote The Great Gatsby (1925); When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was, somehow, betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.--Ch. 8 Fitzgerald's own tempestuous relationship with his wife Zelda would be reflected in his many short stories and novels, first serialised in such literary journals as Scribner's and the Saturday Evening Post. Their lives are a classic study of the American Dream in all its highs, lows, excesses, and joys. Highly lauded as a writer, Fitzgerald was often mired in debt because of his and Zelda's lavish lifestyle, living beyond their means.

The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald's characters Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Myrtle, Jay Gatsby, and Nick Carraway epitomise the Jazz Age but is has also remained timeless in its examination of man's obsessions with and need for money, power, knowledge, and hope. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (named after Francis Scott Key, author of the United States' national anthem "The Star Spangled Banner") was born into an upper-middle class family on 24 September 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the only son of Edward Fitzgerald (1853-1931) and Mary 'Mollie' McQuillan (1860-1936), but had one sister, Annabel, born in 1901. In 1898 the Fitzgeralds moved to Buffalo, New York where Edward obtained a job as salesman with Proctor and Gamble after his furniture-making company foundered. It was the first move of many that Francis would make during his lifetime. When Edward lost his job in 1908 they were back in St. Paul. That same year, young Francis was enrolled in the St. Paul Academy.

Early on he showed a love of the theatre and writing--his first work to appear in print was a detective story The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage (1909) in the Academy's student paper Now and Then. He next attended The Newman School, a Catholic prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey. It was there that he met mentor, friend and Monsignor Darcy's real-life model, Father Cyril Webster Sigourney Fay (1875-1919). In 1913 he entered Princeton University and his love of theatre came to the fore--he wrote many scripts for the Princeton Triangle Club's musicals including Fie! Fie! Fi-Fi! (1914). He also had stories printed in The Princeton Tiger and the Nassau Literary Magazine. Fitzgerald met many lifelong friends at Princeton including John Peale Bishop and Edmund Wilson. His amateur play titles include The Girl From Lazy J (1911), Coward (1913), and Assorted Spirits (1914). In 1917 Fitzgerald left Princeton to join the army.

While in Montgomery, Alabama in 1918 he met Zelda Sayre (1900-1948). A year later they were engaged, but Zelda broke it off a few months later. After his discharge from the army in 1919, Fitzgerald moved to New York City. While working in advertising, he also found time to develop his first novel The Romantic Egoist. It was rejected by Charles Scribner but after three revisions they published it to great success as This Side Of Paradise (1920). Examining the morality of, and trials and tribulations of, early twentieth century youth, Fitzgerald's voice spoke to many of his contemporaries. He gained much esteem from fellow authors including Ring Lardner and Ernest Hemingway, although years later Hemingway would viciously criticise him. Fitzgerald now finally got a taste of his own paradise; he and Zelda married on 3 April 1920 at St Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Their daughter Frances Scott 'Scottie' was born in 1922.

The Fitzgeralds honeymooned at the Biltmore Hotel but were asked to leave because of what would become a pattern, their notoriously raucous parties. They settled at a home in Westport, Connecticut and continued the lifestyle of the rich and famous, constantly entertaining. Zelda was flirtatious, Fitzgerald was jealous, and it was the beginning of a turbulent life together. While he continued to write short stories for magazines, his next major published work was a collection of short stories, Flappers and Philosophers (1920). Zelda embraced the flapper lifestyle dressing provocatively and smoking cigarettes, and she and her husband enjoyed the free-thinking, hedonistic pursuits of the roaring twenties when the post-war American economy was booming. Although it was a time of prohibition, there was no deficit of alcohol in the Fitzgerald household. Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), Fitzgerald's second collection of shorts contains one of his most famous short stories "The Diamond As Big As the Ritz". His second novel, also adapted to the screen, was published the same year, The Beautiful and The Damned (1922); "I love it," she said frankly. It was impossible to doubt her. ....

At her happiness, a gorgeous sentiment welled into his eyes, choked him up, set his nerves a-tingle, and filled his throat with husky and vibrant emotion. There was a hush upon the room. The careless violins and saxophones, the shrill rasping complaint of a child near by, the voice of the violet-hatted girl at the next table, all moved slowly out, receded, and fell away like shadowy reflections on the shining floor--and they two, it seemed to him, were alone and infinitely remote, quiet. Surely the freshness of her cheeks was a gossamer projection from a land of delicate and undiscovered shades; her hand gleaming on the stained table-cloth was a shell from some far and wildly virginal sea....--Ch. 2 Like Armory Blaine in This Side Of Paradise, Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert, like many of his stories to come, reflect autobiographical elements to Fitzgerald and Zelda's life. Zelda herself wrote; many of her stories and reviews, some of them of her husband's works were published in the same magazines as Fitzgerald's.

Titles include her short story "The Original Follies Girl" (1929), Scandalabra (play, 1933), and her only novel Save Me the Waltz (1932). Zelda was also a talented painter. After the immense success of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald's All the Sad Young Men (1926) prophetically harkened things to come. While his short stories and another collection Taps at Reveille (1934) continued to appear in magazines, and he started "The Crack Up" essays for Esquire magazine, it was not until 1934 that Fitzgerald published his next book Tender is the Night. Zelda was profoundly upset to discover that Nicole Diver was modeled after her, but the late 1920's and early 1930's provided much fodder for the novel. In 1927 the Fitzgeralds rented the 27 bedroom mansion Ellerslie, near Wilmington, Delaware and drunken parties ensued. Fitzgerald was increasingly turning to alcohol, sometimes becoming abusive. Zelda often acted out impetuously, embarrassing herself in front of friends and strangers.

She became fixated on her old love, ballet, often practicing to the point of physical and emotional collapse. For the next three years the couple travelled back and forth between New York, Montgomery, and Baltimore. They also travelled to and stayed in Europe for months at a time, sometimes with fellow Americans in Paris, the Riviera, Cannes, St. Raphaï¿½l, Capri, Antibes, and Rome. In 1930 they were in North Africa, the same year Zelda had a nervous breakdown. For the next few years she was in and out of clinics in Switzerland. Fitzgerald continued to use his wife's mental breakdowns and their overall dysfunctional relationship in his writings including "The Last of the Belles" (1929), "Babylon Revisited" (1930), "Emotional Bankruptcy" (1931), "Crazy Sunday" (1932), and "Trouble" (1937). Back in America in 1931, Fitzgerald went to California to work on scripts for the Metro Goldwyn Meyer film company.

"Red-Headed Woman", "A Yank at Oxford", "Marie Antoinette", and "Three Comrades" are among the scripts he worked on. He moved there in 1938, having fallen in love with writer and movie critic Sheilah Graham. While his contract with MGM was not renewed, a number of other film companies hired him to do freelance work. But Fitzgerald's alcoholism continually interfered with his life and work, requiring hospitalisation at times. Still struggling with her illness, Zelda moved back to America and went to live with her mother in Montgomery in 1940. The same year, Fitzgerald had a heart attack; a month later, on 21 December 1940 he died of a second heart attack at Sheilah Graham's apartment in Hollywood, California. He now rests in Rockville Union Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland, with Zelda by his side. She survived him by eight years, until she died in a fire at the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1975 they were re-interred in Scott's family plot at St.

Mary's Catholic Church Cemetery, Rockville, Maryland, where their daughter Scottie was buried in 1986. "I know myself," he cried, "but that is all."--Armory Blaine, This Side of Paradise--Ch. 9 Biography written by C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2007. All Rights Reserved. The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission. Forum Discussions on F. Scott Fitzgerald Recent Forum Posts on F. Scott Fitzgerald Beyond The Great Gatsby: 3 More F. Scott Fitzgerald Books You Might Like | The Artifice Login Sign Up Beyond The Great Gatsby: 3 More F. Scott Fitzgerald Books You Might Like The Great Gatsby is without a doubt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best known book. Baz Luhrmann’s recent adaptation only serves to cement this fact. However, it is not necessarily his best work. It can be argued, and has been in literary circles, that Gatsby does not feature Fitzgerald’s best writing. I would tend to agree. I was disappointed with The Great Gatsby and felt it did not live up to its reputation.

This article aims to introduce readers to some of Fitzgerald’s lesser known, but equally as good novels. Furthermore it aims to show how and why these novels, although possibly better written, have not received the attention lavished on The Great Gatsby. 3. The Beautiful and the Damned Fitzgerald’s second book published in 1922 follows the life of nouveau-riche couple Anthony and Gloria Patch. The novel details the life of young bright things in the twenties, moving from party to party, as the Patch’s await his grandfather’s inheritance. They are deeply passionate about each other, about nice things, nice places and nice people. But they are not passionate about managing their money, and fall into a spiral of spending what they don’t have on things they don’t need (at one point, on the verge of destitution, Anthony spends $75 on a case of whisky). This financial bankruptcy is twinned with both character’s ‘emotional bankruptcy’. This is the idea that they should have as good a time as possible now, without a care for what happens after. This ‘Nietzscheanism’ highlights the general lethargy that is prevalent throughout the novel.

Overall the tone of the novel is depressing, with little to give the reader genuine pleasure or happiness. However, this is what makes it such an important work. It infuses in the reader the want to succeed, to not fall has hard as Anthony and Gloria. It almost serves as a warning to not repeat the mistakes that play out in front of the reader. To have purpose in ones life. The plot isn’t one of Fitzgerald’s best, but the beautifully crafted prose more than makes up for it. It is an account of Anthony Patch’s life; of his alcoholism (‘pour into themselves a gay and delicate poison’), his military service and his relationship with Gloria (‘They were stars on this stage, playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretence created the actuality’). But it is also much more than that. It is a social history of the ‘Jazz Age’, where money was plentiful, drinks flowed and good times were there to be had. There are some problems with the novel that I think hold it back from being as popular as The Great Gatsby. Firstly, the characters are not likeable. Anthony is lazy, uninspired, irrational and the worst part is that he knows this.

He understands his inability to do anything constructive in his life and is in Gloria’s words an ‘utter coward’. Gloria is obsessed with all things beautiful, including herself and the thought of losing herbeauty frightens her. In comparison to Jay Gatsby, the characters have nowhere near as much allure. There is no mystery or intrigue. We know they are beautiful and we know they are destined for a fall. Therefore it is hard to connect with them. Wanting them to succeed is utterly futile. The second problem is it’s ending. Despite Anthony and Gloria’s great fall, they end up, if not successful, then at least avoiding complete failure. They challenge the settlement of the will (as it originally ends up being left to his Grandfather’s secretary Shuttleworth) and win. The novel ends with them leaving New York on a boat bound for Italy with Anthony’s last words: ‘I showed them, it was a hard fight, but I didn’t give up and I came through’. This ending leaves the reader feeling a little cheated, as if the preceding fall had all been for nothing. They are never held accountable for their failures. Instead they are able to physically and metaphorically sail away from their troubles. 2.

Tender is the Night Tender is the Night is Fitzgerald’s second best known novel and is set in the American expatriate community of Europe. Fitzgerald tells the story of the relationship between Dick Diver, a psychologist, and his patient and wife Nicole. Their extravagant lifestyle, based on family money, soon begins to unravel through a mix of laziness, alcoholism and Dick’s affair with a young American actress (Rosemary Hoyt). Published in 1934 Tender is the Night met with little initial critical or commercial acclaim. And it is easy to understand why. Unlike the Great Gatsby, the plot is fairly slow with nothing really significant happening at the beginning of the novel. The overall plot isn’t as tight as Gatsby either, which is held together by the mystery of who Jay Gatsby really is. Tender is the Night is a harder read, that deals with complex human relationships that are not easily understood or dealt with. This however is the triumph of the novel, as we really do believe in the characters and their issues. Although Dick’s marriage to one of his patients is slightly absurd, the subsequent break up of their marriage is played out faultlessly by Fitzgerald. Dick Diver’s decline and fall is a spectacle to behold.

And it carries with it underlying questions on subjects such as the move to modernity, and the American Dream. Tender is the Night is much more than a simple decline story, it was an attempt at ‘social realism’ which aims to show a ‘densely actualised social, historical and geographical background’ against which the characters interactions play out. This is what gives the novel is credibility as the characters chronology, medical and scientific facts, and details of contemporary events are flawless. As with The Beautiful and the Dammed the subject matter is that of deterioration and decline, which are fairly downbeat topics. This then limits affect that the novels can have, as most people would prefer to read a book, if not happy, then at least not depressing. There are however moments of beautifully woven language that reward the persevering reader: ‘Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy – one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself ’. 1. The Last Tycoon The Last Tycoon was left unfinished by Fitzgerald’s death on the 21 of December 1940.

It was his attempt at recapturing his readership, that he felt he had lost with the end of the Jazz Age. The novel details the film industry in Hollywood, initially from the viewpoint of a Studio Executive’s daughter, Cecilia Brady, then later following her father’s rival, Monroe Stahl. We follow Stahl as he must navigate the pressures brought on by theDepression and the Unions. While at the same time dealing with the death of his wife, through a burgeoning affair with Kathleen Moore. What is interesting about this book is the clear parallels with The Great Gatsby. Both use the ‘middleman’ narrator (Cecilia Brady and Nick Carraway), who are both enamoured with the central character (Monroe Stahl and Jay Gatsby). This gives the reader the illusion of authenticity, as if one of our own friends is relaying the story to us. The Last Tycoon goes further than The Great Gatsby however, as Cecilia is present at most important events. If she is not then we are informed of how she gathered the information of the events and who the information came from. This is a marked improvement from the absence of Carraway in the last chapters of The Great Gatsby.

Another point to note is the contrast of Monroe Stahl being both at the forefront of the film industry and pioneering new techniques and practices (for example using multiple writers on one film, a technique that Fitzgerald deplored), and being a ‘hero’ to his employees, the ‘last prince’ and the titular ‘Last Tycoon’. He is both at the forefront of the industry and one of the old guard. This is embodied in his battle with Brady, which if finished, would have given the novel a certain vibrancy that it can be argued is absent from the above two novels. If The Last Tycoon had been finished I feel there is a strong chance that it would have rivalled The Great Gatsby. It has strong, believable characters and an intriguing story line. From what exists of the book the writing is just as good as Tender is the Night. It is truly a shame that Fitzgerald died before he could complete it. People who have only encountered The Great Gatsby should not fear exploring Fitzgerald’s other novels. They are full of delicate and poetic prose, strong characters and engaging story lines. Without a doubt The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s best known work and not without reason.

Its storyline is the strongest, capturing the reader on the very first page and holding them hostage right up until the last sentence. Fitzgerald’s other novels are not as strong in this respect, but are stronger in their illustrations of the ‘Jazz Age’ and more complex relationships between characters. By only reading The Great Gatsby people are missing out on some of F Scott Fitzgerald’s best work. The Sensible Thing: Biographies F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream F. Scott Fitzgerald's life is a tragic example of both sides of the American Dream - the joys of young love, wealth and success, and the tragedies associated with excess and failure. Named for another famous American, a distant cousin who authored the Star Spangled Banner, Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul Minnesota on September 24, 1896. The son of a failed wicker furniture salesman (Edward Fitzgerald) and an Irish immigrant with a large inheritance (Mary "Mollie" McQuillan), Fitzgerald grew up in a solidly Catholic and upper middle class environment. 1935 Portrait by David Silvette, courtesy National Portrait Gallery. Fitzgerald started writing at an early age.

His high school newspaper published his detective stories, encouraging him to pursue writing more enthusiastically than academics. He dropped out of Princeton University to join the army and continued to pursue his obsession, writing magazine articles and even musical lyrics. At 21 years of age, he submitted his first novel for publication and Charles Scribner's Sons rejected it, but with words of encouragement. Beginning a pattern of constant revising that would characterize his writing style for the rest of his career, Fitzgerald decided to rewrite "The Romantic Egoist" and resubmit it for publication. Meanwhile, fate, in the form of the U.S. army, stationed him near Montgomery, Alabama in 1918, where he met and fell in love with an 18-year-old Southern belle - Zelda Sayre. Scribners rejected his novel for a second time, and so Fitzgerald turned to advertising as a steady source of income. Unfortunately, his paltry salary was not enough to convince Zelda to marry him, and tired of waiting for him to make his fortune, she broke their engagement in 1919.

Happily, Scribners finally accepted the novel after Fitzgerald rewrote it for the third time as "This Side of Paradise", and published it a year later. Fitzgerald, suddenly a rich and famous author, married Zelda a week after its publication. In between writing novels, Fitzgerald was quite prolific as a magazine story writer. The Saturday Evening Post in particular served as a showcase for his short works of fiction, most of which revolved around a new breed of American woman - the young, free-thinking, independent "flapper" of the Roaring Twenties. The Fitzgeralds enjoyed fame and fortune, and his novels reflected their lifestyle, describing in semi-autobiographical fiction the privileged lives of wealthy, aspiring socialites. Fitzgerald wrote his second novel - "The Beautiful and the Damned" a year after they were married. Three years later, after the birth of their first and only child, Scottie, Fitzgerald completed his best-known work: "The Great Gatsby." The extravagant living made possible by such success, however, took its toll.

Constantly globe-trotting (living at various times in several different cities in Italy, France, Switzerland, and eight of the United States), the Fitzgeralds tried in vain to escape or at least seek respite from Scott's alcoholism and Zelda's mental illness. Zelda suffered several breakdowns in both her physical and mental health, and sought treatment in and out of clinics from 1930 until her death (due to a fire at Highland Hospital in North Carolina in 1948). Zelda's mental illness, the subject of Fitzgerald's fourth novel, "Tender is the Night," had a debilitating effect on Scott's writing. He described his own "crack-up" in an essay that he wrote in 1936, hopelessly in debt, unable to write, nearly estranged from his wife and daughter, and incapacitated by excessive drinking and poor physical health. Things were looking up for Fitzgerald near the end of his life - he won a contract in 1937 to write for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood and fell in love with Sheilah Graham, a movie columnist.

He had started writing again - scripts, short-stories, and the first draft of a new novel about Hollywood - when he suffered a heart attack and died in 1940 at the age of 44, a failure in his own mind. Most commonly recognized only as an extravagant drunk, who epitomized the excesses of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald's work did not earn the credibility and recognition it holds today until years after his death. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald Artist, Writer, Dancer and Wife "By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long since passed which determined the future." -Zelda Fitzgerald This quote perfectly illustrates Zelda Fitzgerald's lifelong struggle to create her own artistic identity. Born in 1900 in Montgomery, Alabama, she entered a world that was just starting to consider the possibility that women might have the right to be independent citizens capable of making their own decisions. The youngest of six children, her parents raised Zelda as a free-spirited, imaginative and thoroughly spoiled little girl. By the age of eighteen, when she met F. Scott Fitzgerald at one of the many parties she attended, she embodied the quintessential southern belle.

Zelda as a young girl. A constant stream of passionate and argumentative love letters punctuated the period of their engagement while Scott worked in Manhattan and Zelda remained at her parents' home in Montgomery. For Zelda, marriage represented a new lease on life, the only way out of her small-town existence as someone's daughter, without any rights of her own. For a year, Scott struggled unsuccessfully to make his fortune in the advertising business, but Zelda grew tired of waiting. When he professed that he could not be successful without her by his side and proposed, she broke the engagement because she felt too much pressure. She insisted that he find success first on his own. His first novel made Scott rich within the year, and Zelda married him a week after its publication. As his wife, she embarked on a new life as a flapper - a freethinking woman with the world at her disposal. She was a huge influence on his writing, providing much of the material for his novels and short stories throughout their engagement and marriage. Scott frequently quoted her and her letters directly, using her words as the voice for several of his female characters. Zelda bore her first and only child at 21, naming Scottie after her husband.

By 1924, Zelda's influence on Scott's writing had become less positive. An affair with a French naval aviator strained their marriage, so Zelda sought fulfillment in other venues. In 1928, she decided to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a professional ballerina, and began taking lessons in Paris from a famous dancer. At the late age of 27, three years of intense ballet work (eight hours a day) damaged her health, and prompted her first mental breakdown, diagnosed as "nervous exhaustion", in 1930. Zelda was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, and would reside in and out of hospitals for the rest of her life. During her stay at Johns Hopkins hospital in 1932, she wrote her first and only novel: "Save Me the Waltz." A fairly prolific writer, Zelda also wrote eleven short stories and twelve articles during her lifetime. Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, circa 1921. Writing was not Zelda's only form of artistic expression - she was also a painter. She painted brilliantly colored whimsical, sometimes fantastical works of art. Her granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan, describes Zelda's paintings as "theatrical.

They're like on a raised stage floor, and the characters are actors who are before you, waiting to perform." Several different areas of Zelda's life influenced her choice of subject matter. She painted one series based on children's fairy tales such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "The Lobster Quadrille," from Alice in Wonderland. The Bible and Zelda's strong religious beliefs inspired another series of illustrations. She also painted from life, creating portraits of both herself and her husband, and depicting scenes from New York in the 1940s. A fire destroyed most paintings, and Zelda even donated some to the army during World War II to be painted over and used as canvas. Perhaps if Zelda had focused on just one form of artistic expression, she would have found her own success and fame independent of her marriage to a famous author. Her accomplishments are still impressive, especially when one takes the context of her life into consideration. As an icon of the Jazz Age, she struggled against her traditional southern upbringing and its societal constraints to create a new, independent identity not just for herself, but for all American women. Biographer Erika Willett is a modern-day flapper enjoying the good life in San Francisco.

F.Scott Fitzgerald Centenary The dominant influences on F. Scott Fitzgerald were aspiration, literature, Princeton, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, and alcohol. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, the namesake and second cousin three times removed of the author of the National Anthem. Fitzgerald’s given names indicate his parents’ pride in his father’s ancestry. His father, Edward, was from Maryland, with an allegiance to the Old South and its values. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary (Mollie) McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. Both were Catholics. Edward Fitzgerald failed as a manufacturer of wicker furniture in St. Paul, and he became a salesman for Procter & Gamble in upstate New York. After he was dismissed in 1908, when his son was twelve, the family returned to St. Paul and lived comfortably on Mollie Fitzgerald’s inheritance. Fitzgerald attended the St. Paul Academy; his first writing to appear in print was a detective story in the school newspaper when he was thirteen.

During 1911-1913 he attended the Newman School, a Catholic prep school in New Jersey, where he met Father Sigourney Fay, who encouraged his ambitions for personal distinction and achievement. As a member of the Princeton Class of 1917, Fitzgerald neglected his studies for his literary apprenticeship. He wrote the scripts and lyrics for the Princeton Triangle Club musicals and was a contributor to the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and the Nassau Literary Magazine. His college friends included Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. On academic probation and unlikely to graduate, Fitzgerald joined the army in 1917 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. Convinced that he would die in the war, he rapidly wrote a novel, “The Romantic Egotist”; the letter of rejection from Charles Scribner’s Sons praised the novel’s originality and asked that it be resubmitted when revised. In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. There he fell in love with a celebrated belle, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge.

The romance intensified Fitzgerald’s hopes for the success of his novel, but after revision it was rejected by Scribners for a second time. The war ended just before he was to be sent overseas; after his discharge in 1919 he went to New York City to seek his fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda Sayre broke their engagement. Fitzgerald quit his job in July 1919 and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel as This Side of Paradise. It was accepted by editor Maxwell Perkins of Scribners in September. Set mainly at Princeton and described by its author as “a quest novel,” This Side of Paradise traces the career aspirations and love disappointments of Amory Blaine. In the fall-winter of 1919 Fitzgerald commenced his career as a writer of stories for the mass-circulation magazines. Working through agent Harold Ober, Fitzgerald interrupted work on his novels to write moneymaking popular fiction for the rest of his life.

The Saturday Evening Postbecame Fitzgerald’s best story market, and he was regarded as a “Post writer.” His early commercial stories about young love introduced a fresh character: the independent, determined young American woman who appeared in “The Offshore Pirate” and “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.”Fitzgerald’s more ambitious stories, such as “May Day” and “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,”were published in The Smart Set, which had a small circulation. The publication of This Side of Paradise on March 26, 1920, made the twenty-four-year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. They embarked on an extravagant life as young celebrities. Fitzgerald endeavored to earn a solid literary reputation, but his playboy image impeded the proper assessment of his work. After a riotous summer in Westport, Connecticut, the Fitzgeralds took an apartment in New York City; there he wrote his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, a naturalistic chronicle of the dissipation of Anthony and Gloria Patch. When Zelda Fitzgerald became pregnant they took their first trip to Europe in 1921 and then settled in St.

Paul for the birth of their only child, Frances Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald, who was born in October 1921. The Fitzgeralds expected to become affluent from his play, The Vegetable. In the fall of 1922 they moved to Great Neck, Long Island, in order to be near Broadway. The political satireòsubtitled “From President to Postman”òfailed at its tryout in November 1923, and Fitzgerald wrote his way out of debt with short stories. The distractions of Great Neck and New York prevented Fitzgerald from making progress on his third novel. During this time his drinking increased. He was an alcoholic, but he wrote sober. Zelda Fitzgerald regularly got “tight,” but she was not an alcoholic. There were frequent domestic rows, usually triggered by drinking bouts. Literary opinion makers were reluctant to accord Fitzgerald full marks as a serious craftsman. His reputation as a drinker inspired the myth that he was an irresponsible writer; yet he was a painstaking reviser whose fiction went through layers of drafts. Fitzgerald’s clear, lyrical, colorful, witty style evoked the emotions associated with time and place.

When critics objected to Fitzgerald’s concern with love and success, his response was: “But, my God! it was my material, and it was all I had to deal with.” The chief theme of Fitzgerald’s work is aspirationòthe idealism he regarded as defining American character. Another major theme was mutability or loss. As a social historian Fitzgerald became identified with the Jazz Age: “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire,” he wrote in “Echoes of the Jazz Age.” Seeking tranquility for his work the Fitzgeralds went to France in the spring of 1924 . He wroteThe Great Gatsby during the summer and fall in Valescure near St. Raphael, but the marriage was damaged by Zelda’s involvement with a French naval aviator. The extent of the affairòif it was in fact consummatedòis not known. On the Riviera the Fitzgeralds formed a close friendship with affluent and cultured American expatriates Gerald and Sara Murphy.

The Fitzgeralds spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Rome, where he revised The Great Gatsby; they were en route to Paris when the novel was published in April. The Great Gatsby marked a striking advance in Fitzgerald’s technique, utilizing a complex structure and a controlled narrative point of view. Fitzgerald’s achievement received critical praise, but sales of Gatsby were disappointing, though the stage and movie rights brought additional income. In Paris Fitzgerald met Ernest Hemingwayòthen unknown outside the expatriate literary circleòwith whom he formed a friendship based largely on his admiration for Hemingway’s personality and genius. The Fitzgeralds remained in France until the end of 1926, alternating between Paris and the Riviera. Fitzgerald made little progress on his fourth novel, a study of American expatriates in France provisionally titled “The Boy Who Killed His Mother,” “Our Type,”and “The World’s Fair.” During these years Zelda Fitzgerald’s unconventional behavior became increasingly eccentric. The Fitzgeralds returned to America to escape the distractions of France.

After a short, unsuccessful stint of screen writing in Hollywood, Fitzgerald rented “Ellerslie,” a mansion near Wilmington, Delaware, in the spring of 1927. The family remained at “Ellerslie” for two years interrupted by a visit to Paris in the summer of 1928, but Fitzgerald was still unable to make significant progress on his novel. At this time Zelda Fitzgerald commenced ballet training, intending to become a professional dancer. The Fitzgeralds returned to France in the spring of 1929, where Zelda’s intense ballet work damaged her health and contributed to the couple’s estrangement. In April 1930 she suffered her first breakdown. She was treated at Prangins clinic in Switzerland until September 1931, while Fitzgerald lived in Swiss hotels. Work on the novel was again suspended as he wrote short stories to pay for psychiatric treatment. Fitzgerald’s peak story fee of $4,000 from The Saturday Evening Post may have had in 1929 the purchasing power of $40,000 in present-day dollars. Nonetheless, the general view of his affluence is distorted.

Fitzgerald was not among the highest-paid writers of his time; his novels earned comparatively little, and most of his income came from 160 magazine stories. During the 1920s his income from all sources averaged under $25,000 a yearògood money at a time when a schoolteacher’s average annual salary was $1,299, but not a fortune. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald did spend money faster than he earned it; the author who wrote so eloquently about the effects of money on character was unable to manage his own finances. The Fitzgeralds returned to America in the fall of 1931 and rented a house in Montgomery. Fitzgerald made a second unsuccessful trip to Hollywood in 1931. Zelda Fitzgerald suffered a relapse in February 1932 and entered Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She spent the rest of her life as a resident or outpatient of sanitariums. In 1932, while a patient at Johns Hopkins, Zelda Fitzgerald rapidly wrote Save Me the Waltz.

Her autobiographical novel generated considerable bitterness between the Fitzgeralds, for he regarded it as pre-empting the material that he was using in his novel-in-progress. Fitzgerald rented“La Paix,” a house outside Baltimore, where he completed his fourth novel, Tender Is the Night. Published in 1934, his most ambitious novel was a commercial failure, and its merits were matters of critical dispute. Set in France during the 1920s, Tender Is the Night examines the deterioration of Dick Diver, a brilliant American psychiatrist, during the course of his marriage to a wealthy mental patient. The 1936-1937 period is known as “the crack-up” from the title of an essay Fitzgerald wrote in 1936. Ill, drunk, in debt, and unable to write commercial stories, he lived in hotels in the region near Asheville, North Carolina, where in 1936 Zelda Fitzgerald entered Highland Hospital. After Baltimore Fitzgerald did not maintain a home for Scottie. When she was fourteen she went to boarding school, and the Obers became her surrogate family.

Nonetheless, Fitzgerald functioned as a concerned father by mail, attempting to supervise Scottie’s education and to shape her social values. Fitzgerald went to Hollywood alone in the summer of 1937 with a six-month Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer screenwriting contract at $1,000 a week. He received his only screen credit for adaptingThree Comrades (1938), and his contract was renewed for a year at $1,250 a week. The $91,000 he earned from MGM was a great deal of money during the late Depression years when a new Chevrolet coupe cost $619; but although Fitzgerald paid off most of his debts, he was unable to save. His trips East to visit his wife were disastrous. In California Fitzgerald fell in love with movie columnist Sheilah Graham. Their relationship endured despite his benders. After MGM dropped his option at the end of 1938, Fitzgerald worked as a freelance script writer and wrote short-short stories for Esquire.

He began his Hollywood novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, in 1939 and had written more than half of a working draft when he died of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment on December 21, 1940. Zelda Fitzgerald perished at a fire in Highland Hospital in 1948. F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure. The obituaries were condescending, and he seemed destined for literary obscurity. The first phase of the Fitzgerald resurrectionò“revival” does not properly describe the processòoccurred between 1945 and 1950. By 1960 he had achieved a secure place among America’s enduring writers. The Great Gatsby, a work that seriously examines the theme of aspiration in an American setting, defines the classic American novel. Matthew J. Bruccoli’s “A Brief Life of Fitzgerald” originally appeared in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, ed. Bruccoli with the assistance of Judith S. Baughman (New York: Scribners, 1994.); essay reprinted courtesy of Simon & Schuster. F.

Scott Fitzgerald: Novels and Stories 1920-1922 F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels and Stories 1920-1922 Buy Direct On the front flap of this book you read: "At the outset of what he called 'the greatest, the gaudiest spree in history,' F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the novels and stories that brought him instant fame, mastering the glittering aphoristic prose and keen social observation that would distinguish all his writing." Now, we've all heard about F. Scott Fitzgerald. He's most well-known for " The Great Gatsby ," but you may have read some of his other earlier novels as well. At the beginning of his writing career, Fitzgerald seemed destined for unlimited success. In the early 1920s, he was the embodiment and the chronicler of the Jazz Age. So, in this volume, Jackson R. Bryer presents a collection of Fitzgerald's early works: This Side of Paradise (1920), Flappers and Philosophers (1920), The Beautiful and the Damned (1922), and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922).

continue reading below our video What are the Seven Wonders of the World This Side of Paradise This Side of Paradise, originally entitled "The Romantic Egoist" was Fitzgerald's first book. It's about the new life of former soldiers who fought in the war against Germany, so Fitzgerald draws upon his own experience in the army during World War I. Although the novel contains some structural and thematic flaws, the work is important — as we look at the development of Fitzgerald as a writer, and also when we see the book as a portrait of American culture and society. The early success that he experienced with this novel, "defined and haunted him for the rest of his career." Some have suggested that Fitzgerald may never have continued writing if this first work had not been so successful. The Beautiful and the Damned In The Beautiful and the Damned, Fitzgerald depicts Anthony Patch, who spends his grandfather's money on drinking. Again, episodes from Fitzgerald's life creep into his work. Most notable are the descriptions of wild parties, many of which Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, hosted during the first several years of their marriage.

Here again, Fitzgerald continues his "dissection of an era." Bryer writes, "Here New York City, playground for the pleasure-loving Patches and brutal mirror for their dissipation is portrayed more vividly than anywhere else in Fitzgerald's work." Short Stories This edition is well-rounded up with the two collections of short stories, which appeared in 1920 and 1922. You'll find classics like "Dalyrimple Goes Wrong," "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," and "The Ice Palace" in "Flappers". "The Jelly Bean," "May Day," appear "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" as part of "Tales from the Jazz Age." Fitzgerald provided this comment about "The Jelly Bean": "It was written under strange circumstances shortly after my first novel was published, and, moreover, it was the first story in which I had a collaborator.

For, finding that I was unable to manage the crapshooting episode, I turned it over to my wife, who, as a Southern girl, was presumably an expert on the technique and terminology of that great sectional pastime." The Great Gatsby Study Guide SparkNotes: The Great Gatsby: Context The Great Gatsby Table of Contents Plot Overview Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end. Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre.

Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him. Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick’s case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South. Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisy’s love.

As the giddiness of the Roaring Twenties dissolved into the bleakness of the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four. Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up.

Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and “speakeasies”—secret clubs that sold liquor—thrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day. Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised. More Help

Question: What was F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous novel?
Answer: The Great Gatsby