1. F. Scott Fitzgerald & The Great Gatsby

2. Early Biography Sept 24,1896: Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald born in St. Paul, MN His parents were Mary McQuillan, the daughter of Irish immigrants, and Edward Fitzgerald, a salesman. Both were Catholic. Two sisters, ages one and three, had died from influenza shortly before his birth. Probably because of this, his mother became overly protective. Five years later, Fitzgerald’s sister, Annabelle, was born Attended the St. Paul Academy, then the Newman School, a Catholic prep school in New Jersey.

3. Fitzgerald grew up in a family of declining and precarious fortune. His father, Edward, failed as a manufacturer of wicker furniture in St. Paul. He became a salesman for Proctor & Gamble, but was dismissed in 1908 when Fitzgerald was twelve years old. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mollie, helped support the family with her inheritance. They moved to an apartment in this brownstone “row house” in St. Paul, Minnesota, in an area called Summit Terrace, a section of the city inhabited by the city’s wealthiest residents.

4. While his family was not prosperous, Fitzgerald’s mother nurtured social ambitions in her only son. An elderly aunt helped finance his tuition at a private Catholic boarding school in New Jersey called The Newman School and then, in 1913, at Princeton University. At the time, Princeton University was viewed as a training ground for the American upper class.

5. While his grades were low, he excelled in his writings for the Princeton Triangle Club Dramatic Society and the Princeton Tiger. Fitzgerald’s writing from that time shows that he was self-conscious about the differences between himself and his wealthy classmates. Coming from a background of “financial anxiety,” while at Princeton, Fitzgerald developed a fascination with the very rich.

6. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald On academic probation, Fitzgerald joined the army as a 2nd lieutenant in 1917. Afraid that he might die in the war, Fitzgerald quickly finished a novel he had been working on called The Romantic Egoist. While he received a rejection letter from Charles Scribner’s Sons Publishing Co., the novel’s originality was praised. He was encouraged to resubmit the novel after revision. June 1918: While on assignment in Montgomery, AL, he fell in love with Zelda Sayre, daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. He was 21 she was 18 After being discharged from the Army in 1919, Fitzgerald went to New York to seek his fortune so that he could marry Zelda. By day, he worked in an advertising agency, and by night, he wrote stories, submitting them to magazines. For his efforts, he collected nothing but rejection slips. She broke off their engagement in 1919 because she was unwilling to live on Scott’s small salary.

7. Literary Career Beginnings June 1919: Fitzgerald returns to St. Paul, MN to rewrite his novel, This Side of Paradise. In the fall of that year, he begins writing stories in mass-circulation magazines. He wrote many stories for the Saturday Evening Post describing the free-thinking flappers of the 1920’s.

8. Overnight Fame March 26, 1920: This Side of Paradise is published, making the 24 year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight. Fitzgerald was twenty-three years old. He called it “the story of the youth of our generation.” Considered daring and intellectual, This Side of Paradise was a smashing success and an immediate bestseller. Fitzgerald was perceived as the style-setter for the times, and he achieved celebrity status. One week later, he marries Zelda Sayre in New York.

9. Extravagant Living Scott & Zelda begin to live as young celebrities, socializing and drinking heavily. They take their first trip to Europe in 1921. October 1921: Their first and only child, Frances Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald is born.

10. Fitzgerald’s life in the 1920s was a mirror to events occurring nationally during that decade. The Roaring Twenties, also commonly referred to as The Jazz Age, was a time of challenge to the established order, of personal indulgence, and even self-destructive excess. Fitzgerald was its self-proclaimed spokesman and symbol.

11. Much has been written about Zelda and her effect on Fitzgerald’s career. She was an aspiring dancer, she craved attention, and she had expensive taste. She also suffered from mental illness (schizophrenia, nervous breakdowns). While this was an era of Prohibition, Fitzgerald and Zelda drank alcohol publicly and partied like there was no tomorrow. Their tastes were for life in New York’s luxurious Plaza Hotel, expensive and gigantic cars, country homes on Long Island or in Connecticut, and villas in France.

12. They spent money as fast as Fitzgerald could make it. In fact, they spent more than he could make, and they found themselves in debt. Fitzgerald was to spend the rest of his life in a futile struggle to make ends meet. In 1922, Fitzgerald published The Beautiful and the Damned. This novel delineated the self-indulgence and destruction of Anthony and Gloria Patch and was based on the lives of Fitzgerald and Zelda, who were known for their glamorous and “unsettled” lives.

13. Early Stumblings Fall, 1922: The young family moves to Great Neck, NY, expecting to earn a lot of money from Scott’s play, The Vegetable. 1923: The play bombs, and Scott has to write short stories to get out of debt. Scott’s drinking increases. He and Zelda fight often.

14. Gatsby is Born Spring 1924: The Fitzgeralds go to France. Summer 1924: Scott starts writing The Great Gatsby. Zelda has a relationship with a French pilot. Winter 1924-25: The Fitzgerald's go to Rome where Scott revises Gatsby. April 1925. Gatsby is published. Critical reviews are positive, but sales remain low. Novel invites the reader to enter the Jazz Age: fast cars, wild parties, and shady business dealings. Second in the Modern Library's list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century

15. Two collections of short stories – Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) were his next publications. They were judged harshly by critics, motivating Fitzgerald to redirect his efforts. Fitzgerald made a conscious effort to concentrate on creating serious, even tragic works that addressed broad historical and social issues. Fitzgerald’s new sense of vocation, his greater personal maturity, his increasingly complex sense of his era’s place in world history, and his growing awareness of the technical and stylistic capabilities of the modern novel resulted in The Great Gatsby.

16. Fitzgerald and the Expatriates During the mid 1920’s in Paris, Fitzgerald becomes part of the group of expatriate American writers which included Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot. Dubbed “The Lost Generation.”

17. Further Estrangement During the 1920’s, Scott and Zelda’s relationship continues to be strained due to his drinking and her mental instability. They live in Paris, the Riviera, and a mansion near Wilmington, DE. Even though Fitzgerald earns about $4,000 per story (equal to about $40,000 today), he and Zelda continue to run into debt.

18. 1930’s The Fitzgerald's rent a house in Montgomery, AL in 1931. Scott makes an unsuccessful trip to Hollywood; Zelda suffers a mental breakdown in 1932 and is hospitalized. 1936-37: Scott drinks, gets into more debt, and lives in hotels near Asheville, NC. Zelda enters a nearby hospital.

19. The Last Years Summer 1937: Fitzgerald goes to Hollywood with a screenwriting contract earning $1,000/ week. Despite earning $91,000 from MGM, he is unable to save any money. 1938: He falls in love with Sheilah Graham, a movie columnist. Dec 21, 1940: Fitzgerald dies of a heart attack in Graham’s apartment. 1948: Zelda dies in a fire at Highland Hospital.

20. Fitzgerald’s Death “On December 21, 1940 -- the Winter Solstice -- the author F. Scott Fitzgerald jolted to his feet from a green armchair, grasped hold of a marble mantlepiece, and fell down dead of a massive heart attack. He was forty-four years old. His woman companion of three-and-a half years ran out into the hallway and began knocking frantically on doors of their small Hollywood apartment building on Laurel Avenue, just south of Sunset Boulevard, crying desperately for help. She refused to accept that Scott was dead, even later when the ambulance came, and a fire engine also, and a fireman stood over the body and shook his head. The name of the woman was Sheilah Graham, Fitzgerald's last heroine -- a young, pretty Hollywood newspaper columnist.” --Robert Westbrook, son of Sheilah Graham

21. Fitzgerald’s Legacy Although Fitzgerald’s drinking gave him a reputation as an irresponsible writer, he was a painstaking reviser. While he endured a lot of criticism just after his death, his reputation grew in the 1960’s. Today, he is considered one of the great American novelists, and The Great Gatsby is considered his masterpiece.

22. Enduring Associations Fitzgerald has become identified with the extravagant living of 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.” --F. Scott Fitzgerald He felt that aspiration and idealism defined America and its people. His writing style is known for being clear, lyrical, and witty.

23. Sources: www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html www.orionmcs1.freeservers.com/Fitzgerald-1.html www.rarebookonline.com/Fax_Jackets/thissideofparadise.jpg www.born-today.com/Today/09-24.htm www.zeldathemusical.com/fitzgeralds/index.asp www.planetbunky.com/illustrations/zelda.html www.ellisparkerbutler.info/epb/pic/v07/saturday_evening_post_1918_11_16_a.jpg www.riverwalk.org/proglist/showpromo/1927_heart.htm