F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) is the author of The Great Gatsby, hailed as the Great American Novel. His debut, This Side of Paradise, was a cultural sensation that shined a spotlight on the Jazz Age. The novel changed his life: magazines accepted previously rejected work, and Zelda Sayre agreed to marry him. His next work, The Beautiful and the Damned, solidified his place in the cultural elite. After Zelda’s hospitalization for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed Tender Is the Night. Finally sober, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at age forty-four. His friend the critic and writer Edmund Wilson completed Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon.