Francis+Scott+Key+Fitzgerald

=Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald= toc

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American writer of novels and short stories. He is considered on of the twenith centuries greatest writers. Fitzerald is considered part of the lost generation. He finished four novels. One of his well known novels was "The Great Gatsby." He also wrote many short stories.

Early Life
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. He was related, very distantly, to the author of the National Anthem. His father, Edward, was from Maryland. He was very close to the Old South and its values. His mother, Mary, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who later became very wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. Fitzgerald's parents were both catholic.

School
He attended the Newman School, a catholic prep school in New Jersey. There he met Father Sigourney Fay who encouraged his ambitions. He also attended Princeton University. He was a member of the Princeton class of 1917. He wrote the scripts and lyrics for the Princeton Triangle Club musicals and was a contributor to the humor magazine and the Nassau Literary Magazine. He was put on probation and was unlikely to graduate so he joined the army in 1917. He thought he would die in the army so he quickly wrote a novel called "The Romantic Egotist."

Novels, Short Stories, and Fiction
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald's first story, 'Babes in the Wood,' was published in Fitzgerald received thirty dollars from it. He met Zelda Sayren in 1918, an aspiring writer, and married her in 1920. In the same year Fitzgerald's first novel appeared, This Side of Paradise.Fitzgerald was very good at turning his own experiences into fiction. He used all of his experiences with his wife for his fictional novels. The Great Gatsby is a very famous novel written by Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922.

Later Years
Fitzgerald went to Hollywood alone in the summer of 1937 with a six-month Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer screenwriting contract at $1,000 a week. He received his only screen credit for adapting Three Comrades (1938), and his contract was renewed for a year at $1,250 a week. The $91,000 he earned from MGM was a great deal of money during the late Depression; but although Fitzgerald paid off most of his debts, he was unable to save. His trips East to visit his wife were bad. In California Fitzgerald fell in love with movie columnist Sheilah Graham. After MGM dropped his option at the end of 1938, Fitzgerald worked as a freelance script writer and wrote short-short stories for Esquire. He began his Hollywood novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, in 1939 and had written more than half of a working draft when he died.



Later in Life
Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since he was in college, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s. Scott claimed that he had tuberculosis, but he was only using that as a cover up for his drinking Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks in 1940. After the first he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion and to obtain a first floor apartment. On the night of December 20, 1940, he had his second heart attack, and the next day, December 21, while awaiting a visit from his doctor, Fitzgerald collapsed and died.

Resources
1. "A Brief Life of Fitzgerald". __sc.edu.com__. January 31, 2009. http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html 2. "Fitzgerald,Francis Scott Key". __etcweb.princeton.edu.__ January 31, 2009. http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/fitzergald_francis_scott.html 3. Garraty, John A. __The Story of America__ Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1994.