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F.Scott Fitzgerald, an American short story writer and novelist, born on September 24, 1896. At age 13, his first piece of writing was published in the school newspaper. Fast forward to college, during his stay, he wrote various scripts for musicals and magazine publications, but he dropped out due to poor performance and after which he joined the army, during his deployment, he met and fell in love with Zelda, he was discharged after the war ended. He married Zelda in the wake of of his first novel's success.
During his life, he published various novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald could very well be called the 'Writer of the Jazz age' Jazz age being the affluent 19920s its culture, wealth, extravagance and ambition. "It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of satire" Fitzgerald wrote.
The Great Gatsby is considered as Fitzgerald's finest work, he published this book a year after his move to France in a search for inspiration. It was however, long after his death that the book achieved its status as one of the greatest American novels ever written. There is an interesting detail about the book is its cover(yes, that one right there) The cover is an actual painting by one Francis Cugat, it was of course commissioned by the writer himself way before the book was completed so this makes it a sort of collaboration between the artist and the writer.
Fitzgerald unfortunately had a tragic end, he plunged into alcoholism and depression, his beloved wife also suffered from mental illness. He died of a heart attack in 1940 at age 44, his final novel only half complete. Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure as his novels only had such modest commercial and critical success, what an irony , as he is currently considered as one of the pre-eminent authors in the history of American literature.
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