F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American novelist and short story writer, born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He rose to fame at twenty-three with his first novel, and soon became the voice of the postwar years he named the Jazz Age, a time of new money, fast living and restless hope. He wrote for popular magazines to support a lavish life with his wife, Zelda, and spent much of the 1920s in New York and in Europe.

His best-known novel, The Great Gatsby, is now counted among the finest American books of the century, though it sold modestly in his lifetime. Later years brought money troubles, Zelda's illness, his own struggle with drink, and work as a screenwriter in Hollywood. He died there at forty-four, leaving his last novel unfinished. His clear, musical prose and his sharp sense of longing and loss keep him widely read.