Biography
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. Fitzgerald is named after his relative, Francis Scott Key, the author of the American national anthem. His mother, Mary McQuillan, grew up wealthy because her father was a wholesale grocer in St. Paul, Minnesota. His father. Edward Fitzgerald had started a wicker furniture business that failed which made him take a job as a salesman for Procter and Gamble. This job forced Fitzgerald’s family to move back and forth between Syracuse in upstate New York and Buffalo for the first ten years of his life. His father, however, lost his job in 1908 when Francis was only 12 so his family moved back to St. Paul.
Growing up, Fitzgerald was a very bright boy. He got his first story published in his schools newspaper at the ripe age of 13. When Fitz was 15, he attended Newman School, a prestigious catholic school in New Jersey. At Newman, he met Father Sigourney Fay, who recognized Fitzgerald’s talent in writing and encouraged him to pursue his literary dreams.
Fitzgerald enrolled into the military at age 18 and was commissioned second lieutenant in Sheridan Camp in the outskirts of Montgomery, Alabama. While in the infantry, he met his love and his future wife, Zelda Sayre, the daughter of a judge in Alabama
He began his literary career in July of 1919 and through most of his life. He wrote The Great Gatsby in Rome of 1924 – 1925. F. Scott Fitzgerald died at a very young age of 44, leaving behind his wife and child Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and Frances Scott Fitzgerald.
