Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1896-1940)
Perhaps because so much of his writing is autobiographical, F. Scott Fitzgerald is as famous for his personal life as he is for his writing. In his career as a writer, Fitzgerald proved to be gifted in anumber of forms—he excelled as a novelist, a short story writer, and an essayist. But because his personal and professional histories paralleled the times in which he lived and wrote, Fitzgerald will be forever identified with The Jazz Age of the 1920s and the ensuing Great Depression of the 1930s.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, the namesake and distant cousin of the author of the National Anthem. His father, Edward, who viewed himself as an old Southerner, was from Maryland, while his mother, Mary (Mollie) McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who was a successful St. Paul grocery wholesaler. After Fitzgerald's father failed as a businessman in St. Paul, Minnesota, he relocated the family to upstate New York, where he worked as a salesman for Procter and Gamble. In 1908 Fitzgerald's father was let go and he moved the family back to St. Paul. After two years at the Newman School, a Catholic Prep school in New Jersey, Fitzgerald enrolled at Princeton in the Fall of 1913.
