F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St Paul, Minnesota of mixed Southern and Irish descent. He was given three names after the writer of The Star Spangled Banner, to whom he was distantly related. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was a salesman, a Southern gentleman, whose furniture business had failed. Mary McQuillan, his mother, was the daughter of a successful wholesale grocer, and devoted to her only son. The family moved regularly, but settled finally in 1918 in St. Paul. At the age of 18 Fitzgerald fell in love with the 16-year-old Ginevra King, the prototype of Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fsfitzg.htm

He met Zelda Sayre in 1918, she herself was an excellent writer and the two fell in love and were married in 1920. In the next months to follow writing became very difficult and he didnt make much money and was slipping into debt. Zelda was pregnant and the baby was born in 1921. A man by the name of Paris Joyce thought Fitzgerald was mad and he may do himself harm. He still made no money with his release of the novel The Beautiful and Damned so he moved to Europe with his family and created the brilliant Great Gatsby. In the biography of Fitzgerald it states, "The Great Gatsby received excellent reviews but the book did not make the money Fitzgerald expected. He was drunk long periods. Dramatized version of the book opened at the Ambassador Theatre in New York on February 2, 1926. The play's success made possible the sale of Gatsby to the movies. The first film adaptation was made in the same year, directed by Herbert Brenon." http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fsfitzg.htm

It is believed The Great Gatsby was a way for him to express his feelings toward life. I assume this because he tells his daughter this ,""I decided to marry your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me.'' Fitzgerald lived out the rest of his days in both Europe and the United States and developed a drinking problem. Before he could finish his novel The Last Tycoon in 1941 he passed away.