AUTHOR BIO and FACT SHEET

Name ______Date ______Section______AUTHOR BIO and FACT SHEET

About the Author

Author’s Name ___F. Scott Fitzgerald______

Born __1896______Died 1940

Bio Related to Writing Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota (Midwest). His parents were a mixture between wealthy and poor. Fitzgerald was named after Francis Scott Key (of Star

Spangled Banner fame). He attended Princeton and became involved in writing for the campus newspaper and participated in drama club but was kicked out for poor grades. He joins the army and meets his future wife, Zelda Sayer in Montgomery, Alabama. She came from a prominent

background and hesitant about marrying Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald later publishes, This Side of

Paradise and gains overnight success. After this Zelda and Fitzgerald marry and have their first child, Francis (Scottie) Fitzgerald. The travel to France with other American authors and live a

lavish lifestyle. In 1925 Fitzgerald publishes his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby. After the stock market crashed in 1929, Fitzgeralds life starts to crash as well. Zelda suffers a nervous breakdown and is committed. Fitzgerald turns to alcohol and spends nearly an entire decade in a drunken stupor. He gains employment at a Hollywood screenwriter and works on his final novel,

The Last Tycoon. He dies of a heart attack in Hollywood in 1940 at age 44. Zelda later dies in a hospital fire in 1948.

About the Work/s

Time period/genre Modernism

Notable work/s 1) This Side of Paradise

2) The Great Gatsby

3) The Beautiful and Damned

4) Tender is the Night

5) The Last Tycoon Ideas/themes The Ideas and themes that are contained in most of Fitzgerald's works are the ideas that people (especially those of his generation) were wild, wreckless, and immoral folks

who have little disregard for the well being of others. In the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald focusses on the death of the American Dream and criticizing the negative attributes of his contemporaries.