Matthew Brown

Mrs. McKenzie

Adv. American Literature

4/25/17

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (otherwise known as F. Scott Fitzgerald) is a novelist and

America short-story writer, who is well-known for his unstable life style and his most popular

novel The Great Gatsby (Biography.com 1). With the success of his most popular novel came a

lot of ups and downs throughout his livelihood. Fitzgerald suffered from many different

problems by letting the fame take over his fortune. Even while going through some of his hardest

times, he still wrote many books, but only one was very successful.

F Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 4, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota

(Biography.com 1). He moved back and forth between the cities of Syracuse and Buffalo in New

York as a child, because his father failed to keep a solid job. He attended St. Paul Academy,

which is where he saw his first piece of writing on print. Since seeing the print, he practically

said to himself that he wanted to do that one day. After attending St. Paul Academy, he moved to

Newman School, where his strong writing abilities were noticed.

After graduating from Newman School, Fitzgerald decided to continue his writing career

at Princeton University on the state of New Jersey (Biography.com 1). He would write scripts for

Princetons Triangle Club, and also write frequent articles for the Princeton Tiger humor

magazine. His biggest hit during that time would have to be writing stories for the Nassau
Literary Magazine. Fitzgerald let the writing get too much into his head, and seemed to

completely forget about his bookwork, causing him to be placed on academic probation. After he

was placed on probation, he made a very bold decision, and decided to drop out.

After dropping out of college, Fitzgerald decided to join the U.S. Army and fight in

World War One (Biography.com 1). Once making the decision, he quickly regretted it. He wrote

his first novel The Romantic Egoist while in basic training, because he was afraid that he might

die in the war and his literary dreams would be unfulfilled. In 1925, Fitzgeralds most popular

novel The Great Gatsby was published. This novel was what caused Fitzgerald to be the well-

known author that he is today. He wrote many other books other than The Great Gatsby, but that

one was by far the most recognizable.

During Fitzgeralds later years, his life seemed to drop off of a cliff. After completing

The Great Gatsby, he steadily progressed into becoming an alcoholic, and suffered from writers

block (History.com 1). He continually thought of himself as a huge failure, and felt like he could

never rise from the point where he was already at. After two years, he finally started to publish

books again, but sadly, on his last book The Love of the Last Tycoon, he passed away from a

massive heart attack, causing his career to come to an end.

 Work Cited

~ "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television

~ History.com Staff. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010