F. Scott Fitzgerald

American writer (1896–1940) of the Jazz Age whose novels include The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, plus 164 short stories.

LiteraryFiction

Notable work: The Great Gatsby

About F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1896, attended Princeton, and left in 1917 to join the Army. While stationed in Alabama he met Zelda Sayre, who agreed to marry him only after his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), an autobiographical account of his Princeton years, became a commercial success; it sold about 40,000 copies in its first year. The Beautiful and Damned (1922) followed, along with the story collections Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), whose title popularized the name for the decade.

The Great Gatsby (1925), narrated by Nick Carraway on Long Island, drew generally favorable reviews but sold fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. Its standing grew after his death, helped when free Armed Services Editions went to American soldiers in the Second World War, and it is now required reading in many high schools and colleges. Tender Is the Night (1934), set on the French Riviera, was his last completed novel, finished as Zelda's mental health declined. He spent his final years as a Hollywood screenwriter and died of a heart attack in December 1940, at 44, leaving unfinished The Last Tycoon, based on the film executive Irving Thalberg; Edmund Wilson edited it for publication in 1941. In all he published four novels, four story collections and 164 short stories.

Where to Start With F. Scott Fitzgerald

Start with The Great Gatsby. It is the book his reputation rests on, and it holds his main subjects (money, class, and longing for a past that cannot be recovered) in one novel. Then read Tender Is the Night, which draws on Zelda's breakdown and follows the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist, and his marriage on the Riviera.

Then turn to the short stories. “Babylon Revisited” (1931), set in Paris the year after the 1929 crash, draws on a real family dispute over who should raise his daughter, and critics rank it among his best work. Save This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned for later; they matter most as context for how he got to Gatsby.

How the Books Connect

His novels are unconnected, so there is no required order. Reading them as published (1920, 1922, 1925, 1934, then The Last Tycoon in 1941) follows him from campus life and New York society toward the darker material of Tender Is the Night. A 1993 edition of the unfinished novel was retitled The Love of the Last Tycoon, so expect both titles in stores. Many of his stories first appeared in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post before being collected.