He is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers American soil has produced in the 20th century. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, known to his readers just as F.

Scott Fitzgerald, was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota to an upper class family. 

From his early high school days, Fitzgerald showed a penchant for theater and poetry, writing many Elizabethan plays, and when he was a popular football player at the Newman School in New Jersey, he even published a poem defending a fumble he caused.

He eventually dropped out of Princeton to join the army and focus on writing.

1920s was the most influential decade of Scott’s life. He got married with his ex-fiancée Zelda in 1920. They had a daughter Frances Scott in 1922.

His masterpiece novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ was published in 1925. Scott had a number of excursions to Paris and developed close relations with many members of American community there.

He also established acquaintance with Ernest Hemingway however this friendship remained shadowed mostly. The sore point of this friendship was that Hemingway never approved of selling Scott’s stories and novels to Hollywood studios.

Fitzgerald had suffered multiple heart attacks in 1930, and his rampant alcoholism became the harbinger of many other suspected illnesses, including tuberculosis.

On December 20th, 1940, Fitzgerald was pronounced dead of an apparent heart attack. He left behind his partially finished ‘The Last Tycoon’. He was 44.

His work has inspired writers ever since he was first published. T.S Eliot, one of the most important and admired poets of 20th century, wrote in his letter to Fitzgerald upon the publication of ‘The Great Gatsby’:

 It seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.