| The Lovers | |
|---|---|
| Zelda Sayre
(1900-48) was born in montgomery, Alabama. Daughter of an Alabama High Court judge, Zelda was strikingly beautiful but wild, intelligent but unevenly educated. She married Scott Fitzgerald in 1920 and they had one daughter, Frances (known as Scottie), in 1921. After several years of high and happy living, financed by Scott's success as a writer and shaped by his drinking, her behavior became more erratic and obsessive, and their relationship more strained. In 1930 she had her first breakdown. The years that followed were largely spent in mental institutions, but also saw the publication of her confused and moving novel Save Me the Waltz (1932). She had considerable talent, which never quite fulfilled itself. Zelda died in 1948, victim of an asylum fire at the Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina. |
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
(1896-1940) novelist and short story writer, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. Irish on his mother's side, he was a Catholic and was educated at Princeton University. He gained instant fame with his first novel This Side of Paradise (1920). Together with his wife Zelda, he came to represent the "Jazz Age", both in his writing and in his lifestyle, with his wildness, generosity, heavy drinking, partying, and high spending. His finest novel was The Great Gatsby (1925), the story of rich financier Jay gatsby's disastrous love for Daisy Buchanan and a key exploration of "The American Dream". After that the writing came more slowly and the success less surely. He worked periodically as a scriptwriter in Hollywood, where he died of a heart attack in 1940. His final novel, The Last Tycoon, was unfinished when he died. |
