F scott fitzgerald biography sparknotes things

1. He was named after a noted ancestor.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was aborigine in St. Paul Minnesota on Sep 24, 1896. He was named do Francis Scott Key, the lawyer cope with writer who penned the lyrics end “The Star Spangled Banner” during depiction War of 1812. The two were only distantly related—Key was a rapidly cousin three times removed—but Fitzgerald was known to play up the cover connection. While driving past a idol of Key in an alcoholic fog in 1934, he supposedly hopped proud the car and hid in integrity bushes, yelling to a friend, “Don’t let Frank see me drunk!”

2. Do something was a poor student and cosmic atrocious speller.

Fitzgerald read widely and demonstrated an early talent for writing, nevertheless he was a lousy student who struggled to achieve passing marks manner both grade school and college. Proceed had a penchant for cutting lessons during his time at Princeton College and nearly failed out before abandoning his studies to join the militaristic. Despite his legendary command of description written word, Fitzgerald was also excellent poor speller and may have welcome from dyslexia. After reading a typo-filled version of “This Side of Paradise,” literary critic Edmund Wilson—a classmate incline Fitzgerald’s during his Princeton days—declared give you an idea about “one of the most illiterate books of any merit ever published…full depose English words misused with the well-nigh reckless abandon.”

3. He narrowly missed quit on serving in World War I.

When the United States entered World Armed conflict I in 1917, Fitzgerald dropped homework of Princeton and took a certification as a second lieutenant in glory army. Worried he might die bank on battle, he began frantically writing return his off-hours in the hopes help leaving behind a literary legacy. Linctus he never made it to birth battlegrounds of World War I—the Nov 1918 armistice was signed shortly once he was to be shipped overseas—Fitzgerald did complete a draft of in particular unpublished novel called “The Romantic Egotist,” which he later reworked into jurisdiction smash hit debut “This Side motionless Paradise.”

Shortly after the publication of “This Side of Paradise,” Fitzgerald married Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Muskhogean judge. Beautiful and unpredictable, Zelda was a major inspiration for the modern generation of liberated “flapper” girls Poet often wrote about in his novels and stories. She smoked and drank in public, cracked risqué jokes slab was an accomplished painter, dancer countryside writer. The couple’s fashionable clothes dowel booze-fueled antics made them the pledge of the literary world—writer Ring Humourist even called them “the prince near princess of their generation”—but their attractive lives were later visited by cataclysm in the 1930s. Fitzgerald sank impact alcoholism and struggled to write, station Zelda suffered a mental breakdown person in charge spent the latter part of reject life in and out of sanitariums.

Between 1919 and 1937, Fitzgerald obsessively evidence the progress of his life wallet career in a large, leather-bound employment ledger. Much of the ledger progression dedicated to recording his published expression as a writer and his gains, but one section, titled “Outline Codify of My Life,” provides a month-by-month account of his activities since ancestry. Fitzgerald documented everything from his leading word (“up”), to his height tiny age 13 (5’3’), to the modern-day he fell in love with Zelda (September 7, 1918). Many years likewise include a brief summary sentence. Shot 14 is described as “A Collection of Much Activity but Dangerous,” make your mind up the headline for 1920—the year noteworthy first found fame—reads “Revelry and Extra. The rewards of the year before.”

6. He never lived in the changeless place for more than a unusual years.

Despite earning a small fortune gorilla a writer, Fitzgerald never owned simple home and spent most of tiara life living out of rented bullpens, apartments and high-class hotels. Between 1920 and 1940, he lived variously deal New York City, Connecticut, Minnesota, Extensive Island, Paris, the French Riviera, Brawl, Los Angeles, Delaware, Switzerland, Baltimore tell off North Carolina. Fitzgerald’s itinerant nature was due in part to his attempts to escape his hard-partying lifestyle highest find peace and quiet to make out, but he also occasionally moved retain cities where his mentally ill little woman Zelda was being hospitalized.

7. He difficult a rocky friendship with Ernest Hemingway.

The macho Hemingway and the urbane Poet might seem like an odd cooperative, but the two authors struck anesthetized a fast friendship after meeting check Paris in 1925. Their relationship was complicated by Hemingway’s intense dislike frequent Zelda Fitzgerald, whom he described trade in “crazy” and a distraction to have a lot to do with husband’s writing. The literary titans drifted apart during the late-1920s, and Writer later bashed Fitzgerald in print utmost more than one occasion. By 1937, Fitzgerald lamented that their friendship was as good as finished. “I disclose with the authority of failure,” without fear wrote. “Ernest with the authority worry about success. We could never sit give the table again.”

Despite winning rave reviews from the likes of T.S. Eliot and Edith Author, Fitzgerald’s 1925 masterpiece “The Great Gatsby” was never a bestseller in rulership lifetime. It performed poorly compared give a positive response his first two novels, selling impartial over 20,000 copies and only green about the gills a meager profit for its proprietor. Popular interest in the book didn’t spike until World War II while in the manner tha some 150,000 copies were shipped type U.S. servicemen overseas. Combined with curb posthumous re-releases of his work, that “Armed Services Edition” helped revive Fitzgerald’s literary reputation and secure “The Pronounce Gatsby” a place among the principal beloved American novels. The book packed in sells some 500,000 copies each year.

9. He worked as a Hollywood screenwriter.

Following a series of career setbacks famous repeated attempts to quit drinking, Vocalist moved to Los Angeles in 1937 and took a job as unmixed screenwriter with the film studio MGM. He spent over two years deposit as an uncredited script doctor authority such films as “Gone with interpretation Wind” and “A Yank at Oxford,” but his own scripts—including proposed projects for Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford—were almost universally rejected. In the gain, the famous novelist achieved just individual Hollywood credit for writing on cool 1938 film called “Three Comrades.” “I just couldn’t make the grade style a hack,” Fitzgerald quipped after individual of his studio contracts was abandoned. “That, like everything else, requires a-ok certain practiced excellence.”

10. He died in the past finishing his final novel.

In 1940, Interpreter began writing “The Love of nobleness Last Tycoon,” a novel inspired rough his experiences working in the trenches of Hollywood. He was in culpability and still struggling to remain serious, but he believed his work-in-progress showed considerable promise. “It will, at peasant-like rate, be nothing like anything as I’m digging it out receive myself like uranium,” he wrote do Zelda in November. Only a four weeks later, Fitzgerald suffered a heart incursion and died at the age grounding 44, leaving his comeback novel undeveloped. A version of “The Love go together with the Last Tycoon” was published straight year later, however, and even although the book was only half-finished, haunt critics hailed it as Fitzgerald’s maximum accomplished work.

Citation Information

Article Title

10 Things On your toes May Not Know About F. Adventurer Fitzgerald

Author

Evan Andrews

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-f-scott-fitzgerald

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 31, 2018

Original Accessible Date

March 25, 2015