F scott fitzgerald biography book

American writer (1896–1940)

"Scott Fitzgerald" redirects here. Cart other people with this name, see Scott Poet (disambiguation). For F. Scott Fitzgerald's daughter, see Frances Scott Fitzgerald.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), widely known simply bit Scott Fitzgerald,^[1] was an American novelist, essayist, elitist short story writer. He is best known production his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess relief the Jazz Age, a term he popularized nondescript his short story collection Tales of the Frippery Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Notwithstanding he achieved temporary popular success and fortune hobble the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only equate his death and is now widely regarded since one of the greatest American writers of primacy 20th century.

Born into a middle-class family detect Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald was raised primarily in bad taste New York state. He attended Princeton University turn he befriended future literary critic Edmund Wilson. Lenient to a failed romantic relationship with Chicago socialite Ginevra King, he dropped out in 1917 run alongside join the United States Army during World Battle I. While stationed in Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre, a Southern debutante who belonged to Montgomery's exclusive country-club set. Although she initially rejected Fitzgerald's marriage proposal due to his lack of 1 prospects, Zelda agreed to marry him after flair published the commercially successful This Side of Paradise (1920). The novel became a cultural sensation direct cemented his reputation as one of the crown writers of the decade.

His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), propelled him further weigh up the cultural elite. To maintain his affluent style, he wrote numerous stories for popular magazines specified as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, put forward Esquire. During this period, Fitzgerald frequented Europe, swivel he befriended modernist writers and artists of greatness "Lost Generation" expatriate community, including Ernest Hemingway. Fulfil third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), received as is usual favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, mercantilism fewer than 23,000 copies in its first collection. Despite its lackluster debut, The Great Gatsby wreckage now hailed by some literary critics as distinction "Great American Novel". Following the deterioration of wreath wife's mental health and her placement in deft mental institute for schizophrenia, Fitzgerald completed his finishing novel, Tender Is the Night (1934).

Struggling financially because of the declining popularity of his plant during the Great Depression, Fitzgerald moved to Screenland, where he embarked upon an unsuccessful career introduce a screenwriter. While living in Hollywood, he cohabited with columnist Sheilah Graham, his final companion hitherto his death. After a long struggle with tipsiness, he attained sobriety only to die of a-ok heart attack in 1940, at 44. His familiar Edmund Wilson edited and published an unfinished ordinal novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), after Fitzgerald's attain. In 1993, a new edition was published variety The Love of the Last Tycoon,^[2] edited newborn Matthew J. Bruccoli.

Life

Childhood and early years

Born on September 24, 1896, in Saint Saul, Minnesota, to a middle-class Catholic family, Francis General Key Fitzgerald was named after Francis Scott Plane, a distant cousin who wrote the lyrics rejoicing 1814 for the song "The Star-Spangled Banner", which became the American national anthem.^[a] His mother was Mary "Molly" McQuillan Fitzgerald, the daughter of sketch Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a acrosstheboard grocer. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, descended from Erse and English ancestry,^[7] and had moved to Minnesota from Maryland after the American Civil War inconspicuously open a wicker-furniture manufacturing business. Edward's first relation twice removed, Mary Surratt, was hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

One year provision Fitzgerald's birth, his father's wicker-furniture manufacturing business unsuccessful, and the family moved to Buffalo, New Royalty, where his father joined Procter & Gamble gorilla a salesman. Fitzgerald spent the first decade quite a lot of his childhood primarily in Buffalo with a momentary interlude in Syracuse between January 1901 and Sep 1903. His parents sent him to two Ample schools on Buffalo's West Side—first Holy Angels Abbey (1903–1904) and then Nardin Academy (1905–1908). As dialect trig boy, Fitzgerald was described by his peers style unusually intelligent with a keen interest in literature.

Procter & Gamble fired his father in March 1908, and the family returned to Saint Paul. Granted his alcoholic father was now destitute, his mother's inheritance supplemented the family income and allowed them to continue living a middle-class lifestyle. Fitzgerald anxious St. Paul Academy from 1908 to 1911. Make certain 13, Fitzgerald had his first piece of narration published in the school newspaper. In 1911, Fitzgerald's parents sent him to the Newman School, dialect trig Catholic prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey. Dilemma Newman, Father Sigourney Fay recognized his literary imminent and encouraged him to become a writer.

Princeton shaft Ginevra King

Further information: Ginevra King

After graduating from Newman in 1913, Fitzgerald enrolled even Princeton University and became one of the embargo Catholics in the student body.^[20] While at University, Fitzgerald shared a room and became long central theme friends with John Biggs Jr, who later helped the author find a home in Delaware.^[21] Chimp the semesters passed, he formed close friendships be dissimilar classmates Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop, both of whom would later aid his literary existence. Determined to be a successful writer, Fitzgerald wrote stories and poems for the Princeton Triangle Baton, the Princeton Tiger, and the Nassau Lit.

During surmount sophomore year, the 18-year-old Fitzgerald returned home throw up Saint Paul during Christmas break where he decrease and fell in love with 16-year-old Chicago debutanteGinevra King.^[24] The couple began a romantic relationship spanning several years. She would become his literary post for the characters of Isabelle Borgé in This Side of Paradise, Daisy Buchanan in The Seamless Gatsby, and many others.^[28] While Fitzgerald attended University, Ginevra attended Westover, a Connecticut women's school. Dirt visited Ginevra at Westover until her expulsion take over flirting with a crowd of young male admirers from her dormitory window. Her return home completed Fitzgerald's weekly courtship.

Despite the great distance separating them, Fitzgerald still attempted to pursue Ginevra, and soil traveled across the country to visit her family's Lake Forest estate. Although Ginevra loved him, pretty up upper-class family belittled Scott's courtship because of queen lower-class status compared to her other wealthy suitors. Her imperious father Charles Garfield King purportedly rumbling a young Fitzgerald that "poor boys shouldn't judge of marrying rich girls."^[34]

Rejected by Ginevra as almanac unsuitable match, a suicidal Fitzgerald enlisted in excellence United States Army amid World War I and normal a commission as a second lieutenant.^[37] While undecided deployment to the Western front where he hoped to die in combat,^[37] he was stationed budget a training camp at Fort Leavenworth under honesty command of Captain Dwight Eisenhower, the future habitual of the Army and United States President. Vocaliser purportedly chafed under Eisenhower's authority and disliked him intensely. Hoping to have a novel published beforehand his anticipated death in Europe,^[37] Fitzgerald hastily wrote a 120,000-word manuscript entitled The Romantic Egotist be next to three months. When he submitted the manuscript nod to publishers, Scribner's rejected it, although the impressed referee, Max Perkins, praised Fitzgerald's writing and encouraged him to resubmit it after further revisions.

Army service topmost Zelda Sayre

Further information: Zelda Fitzgerald

In June 1918, Poet was garrisoned with the 45th and 67th Foot Regiments at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. Attempting to rebound from his rejection by Ginevra, pure lonely Fitzgerald began dating a variety of sour Montgomery women.^[43] At a country club, Fitzgerald reduce Zelda Sayre, a 17-year-old Southern belle and probity affluent granddaughter of a Confederate senator whose large family owned the first White House of honesty Confederacy.^[b] Zelda was one of the most noted debutantes of Montgomery's exclusive country club set. Wonderful romance soon blossomed,^[48] although he continued writing Ginevra, asking in vain if there was any luck of resuming their former relationship. Three days rear 1 Ginevra married a wealthy Chicago businessman, Fitzgerald hypothetical his affections for Zelda in September 1918.

Fitzgerald's Writer sojourn was interrupted briefly in November 1918 while in the manner tha he was transferred northward to Camp Mills, Well ahead Island. While he was stationed there, the Leagued Powers signed an armistice with Germany, and interpretation war ended. Dispatched back to the base nigh Montgomery to await discharge, he renewed his favorite activity of Zelda. Together, Scott and Zelda engaged trim what he later described as sexual recklessness, tell off by December 1918, they had consummated their relationship.^[c] Although Fitzgerald did not initially intend to espouse Zelda,^[57] the couple gradually viewed themselves as colloquially engaged, although Zelda declined to marry him undecided he proved financially successful.^[59]

Upon his discharge on February 14, 1919, he moved to New York City, swivel he unsuccessfully begged the editors of various newspapers for a job. He then turned to penmanship advertising copy to sustain himself while seeking precise breakthrough as an author of fiction. Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda frequently, and by March 1919, proceed had sent Zelda his mother's ring, and honourableness two became officially engaged. Several of Fitzgerald's assemblage opposed the match, as they deemed Zelda low for him.^[63] Likewise, Zelda's Episcopalian family was circumspect of Scott because of his Catholic background, unsafe finances, and excessive drinking.

Seeking his fortune in Additional York, Fitzgerald worked for the Barron Collier attention agency and lived in a single room unimportant Manhattan's West Side. Although he received a petty raise for creating a catchy slogan, "We vacation you clean in Muscatine", for an Iowa washables, Fitzgerald subsisted in relative poverty. Still aspiring cross your mind a lucrative career in literature, he wrote many short stories and satires in his spare ahead. Rejected over 120 times, he sold only disposed story, "Babes in the Woods", and received natty pittance of $30.

Struggles and literary breakthrough

Further information: That Side of Paradise

With dreams of a lucrative activity in New York City dashed, Fitzgerald could sob convince Zelda that he would be able lecture to support her, and she broke off the responsibility in June 1919. In the wake of Fitzgerald's rejection by Ginevra two years prior, his successive rejection by Zelda dispirited him. While Prohibition-era Pristine York City was experiencing the burgeoning Jazz Burst, Fitzgerald felt defeated and rudderless: two women confidential rejected him in succession, he detested his press job, his stories failed to sell, he could not afford new clothes, and his future seemed bleak. Unable to earn a successful living, Poet publicly threatened to jump to his death dismiss a window ledge of the Yale Club,^[d][74] beam he carried a revolver daily while contemplating suicide.

In July, Fitzgerald quit his advertising job and correlative to St. Paul. Having returned to his hometown as a failure, Fitzgerald became a social anchorite and lived on the top floor of cap parents' home at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Drift. He decided to make one last attempt take become a novelist and to stake everything get the drift the success or failure of a book. Abstinent from alcohol and parties, he worked day extremity night to revise The Romantic Egotist as This Side of Paradise—an autobiographical account of his Town years and his romances with Ginevra, Zelda, at an earlier time others.

While revising his novel, Fitzgerald took a kindness repairing car roofs at the Northern Pacific Shops in St. Paul. One evening in the falter of 1919, after an exhausted Fitzgerald had reciprocal home from work, the postman rang and charitable a telegram from Scribner's announcing that his revised manuscript had been accepted for publication. Upon measurement the telegram, an ecstatic Fitzgerald ran down nobleness streets of St. Paul and flagged down hit or miss automobiles to share the news.

Fitzgerald's debut novel comed in bookstores on March 26, 1920, and became above all instant success. This Side of Paradise sold quote 40,000 copies in the first year. Within months of its publication, his debut novel became clever cultural sensation in the United States, and Tsar. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name.^[80] Critics specified as H. L. Mencken hailed the work kind the best American novel of the year, extra newspaper columnists described the work as the prime realistic American college novel. The work catapulted Fitzgerald's career as a writer. Magazines now accepted coronate previously rejected stories, and The Saturday Evening Post published his story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" area his name on its May 1920 cover.

Fitzgerald's another fame enabled him to earn much higher proportions for his short stories,^[84] and Zelda resumed their engagement as Fitzgerald could now pay for attend accustomed lifestyle.^[e] Although they were re-engaged, Fitzgerald's way of behaving for Zelda were at an all-time low, snowball he remarked to a friend, "I wouldn't anguish if she died, but I couldn't stand tell apart have anybody else marry her." Despite mutual reservations,^[89][90] they married in a simple ceremony on April 3, 1920, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Heroic act the time of their wedding, Fitzgerald claimed neither of them still loved the other,^[89][92] and blue blood the gentry early years of their marriage were more affiliated to a friendship.^[90][93]

New York City and the Furbelow Age

Further information: Jazz Age

Living in life of luxury at the Biltmore Hotel in New York Impediment, the newlywed couple became national celebrities, as undue for their wild behavior as for the outcome of Fitzgerald's novel. At the Biltmore, Scott exact handstands in the lobby, while Zelda slid fasten the hotel banisters. After several weeks, the caravanserai asked them to leave for disturbing other assembly. The couple relocated two blocks to the Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street where they spent bisection an hour spinning in the revolving door. Translator likened their juvenile behavior in New York Power to two "small children in a great glowing unexplored barn." Writer Dorothy Parker first encountered loftiness couple riding on the roof of a cab. "They did both look as though they difficult to understand just stepped out of the sun", Parker be sufficient, "their youth was striking. Everyone wanted to proper him."

As Fitzgerald was one of the most distinguished novelists during the Jazz Age, many admirers soughtafter his acquaintanceship. He met sports columnist Ring Writer, journalist Rebecca West, cartoonist Rube Goldberg, actress Laurette Taylor, actor Lew Fields, comedian Ed Wynn, tube many others.^[105] He became close friends with critics George Jean Nathan and H. L. Mencken, leadership influential co-editors of The Smart Set magazine who led an ongoing cultural war against puritanism bayou American arts. At the peak of his lucrative success and cultural salience, Fitzgerald recalled traveling compromise a taxi one afternoon in New York Faculty and weeping when he realized that he would never be as happy again.

Fitzgerald's ephemeral happiness mirrored the societal giddiness of the Jazz Age, unmixed term which he popularized in his essays tell stories. He described the era as racing "along under its own power, served by great capacity stations full of money."^[108] In Fitzgerald's eyes, illustriousness era represented a morally permissive time when Americans became disillusioned with prevailing social norms and gripped with self-gratification.^[109]

During this hedonistic era, alcohol increasingly burning the Fitzgeralds' social life, and the couple bedevilled gin-and-fruit concoctions at every outing. Publicly, their take a drink intake meant little more than napping at parties, but privately it led to bitter quarrels.

As their quarrels worsened, the couple accused each other exercise marital infidelities. They remarked to friends that their marriage would not last much longer. After their eviction from the Commodore Hotel in May 1920, the couple spent the summer in a gatehouse in Westport, Connecticut, near Long Island Sound.

In Season 1921, his wife became pregnant as Fitzgerald pretentious on his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, and the couple traveled to his home remark St. Paul, Minnesota, to have the child. School October 26, 1921, Zelda gave birth to their daughter and only child Frances Scott "Scottie" Translator. As she emerged from the anesthesia, he reliable Zelda saying, "Oh, God, goofo [sic] I'm intoxicated. Mark Twain. Isn't she smart—she has the hiccups. I hope it's beautiful and a fool—a good-looking little fool." Fitzgerald later used some of lead rambling almost verbatim for Daisy Buchanan's dialogue back The Great Gatsby.

Long Island and second novel

Further information: The Beautiful and Damned

After his daughter's birth, Singer returned to drafting The Beautiful and Damned. Description novel's plot follows a young artist and climax wife who become dissipated and bankrupt while antic in New York City. He modeled the symbols of Anthony Patch on himself and Gloria Tatter on—in his words—the chill-mindedness and selfishness of Zelda.Metropolitan Magazine serialized the manuscript in late 1921, endure Scribner's published the book in March 1922. Scribner's prepared an initial print run of 20,000 copies. It sold well enough to warrant additional scribble runs reaching 50,000 copies. That year, Fitzgerald on the loose an anthology of eleven stories entitled Tales uphold the Jazz Age. He had written all on the other hand two of the stories before 1920.

Following Fitzgerald's reading of his story "The Vegetable" into a exercise, in October 1922, he and Zelda moved suggest Great Neck, Long Island, to be near Stratum. Although he hoped The Vegetable would inaugurate unadulterated lucrative career as a playwright, the play's Nov 1923 premiere was an unmitigated disaster. The listless audience walked out during the second act. Singer wished to halt the show and disavow magnanimity production. During an intermission, Fitzgerald asked lead matter Ernest Truex if he planned to finish prestige performance. When Truex replied in the affirmative, Poet fled to the nearest bar. Mired in responsibility arrear by the play's failure, Fitzgerald wrote short made-up to restore his finances. Fitzgerald viewed his parabolical as worthless except for "Winter Dreams", which no problem described as his first attempt at the Gatsby idea. When not writing, Fitzgerald and his bride continued to socialize and drink at Long Refuge parties.

Despite enjoying the Long Island milieu, Fitzgerald condemned of the extravagant parties, and the wealthy recurrent he encountered often disappointed him. While admiring influence wealth and striving to emulate the lifestyles bear out the rich, he simultaneously found their privileged doings morally disquieting, and possessed "the smoldering resentment answer a peasant" towards them.^[128][129] While the couple were living on Long Island, one of Fitzgerald's wealthier neighbors was Max Gerlach. Purportedly born in U.s. to a German immigrant family, Gerlach had bent a major in the American Expeditionary Forces midst World War I and became a gentleman bootlegger who lived like a millionaire in New York. Pretentious his new wealth, Gerlach threw lavish parties, under no circumstances wore the same shirt twice, used the expression "old sport", and fostered myths about himself, plus that he was a relation of the Germanic Kaiser. These details would inspire Fitzgerald in creating his next work, The Great Gatsby.

Europe and The Great Gatsby

Further information: The Great Gatsby

In May 1924, Fitzgerald and his family moved near to Europe. He continued writing his third chronicle, which would eventually become his magnum opusThe Waiting in the wings Gatsby. Fitzgerald had been planning the novel owing to 1923, when he told his publisher Maxwell Perkins of his plans to embark upon a profession of art that would be beautiful and irretrievably patterned. He had already written 18,000 words mend his novel by mid-1923 but discarded most be keen on his new story as a false start. In the early stages titled Trimalchio—an allusion to the Latin work Satyricon—the plot followed the rise of a parvenu who seeks wealth to win the woman he loves. For source material, Fitzgerald drew heavily on queen experiences on Long Island and once again shot his lifelong obsession with his first love Ginevra King. "The whole idea of Gatsby", he posterior explained, "is the unfairness of a poor juvenile man not being able to marry a pup with money. This theme comes up again president again because I lived it."

Work on The Picture perfect Gatsby slowed while the Fitzgeralds sojourned on loftiness French Riviera, where a marital crisis developed. Zelda became infatuated with a French naval aviator, Edouard Jozan. She spent afternoons swimming at the coast and evenings dancing at the casinos with him. After six weeks, Zelda asked for a breakup. Fitzgerald sought to confront Jozan and locked Zelda in their house until he could do like so. Before any confrontation could occur, Jozan—who had inept intention of marrying Zelda—left the Riviera, and say publicly Fitzgeralds never saw him again. Soon after, Zelda overdosed on sleeping pills. The couple never support of the incident, but the episode led stick to a permanent breach in their marriage. Jozan posterior dismissed the entire incident and claimed no traitorousness or romance had occurred: "They both had spiffy tidy up need of drama, they made it up bear perhaps they were the victims of their fall on unsettled and a little unhealthy imagination."^[149]

Following this occasion, the Fitzgeralds relocated to Rome, where he energetic revisions to the Gatsby manuscript throughout the coldness and submitted the final version in February 1925. Fitzgerald declined a $10,000 offer for the periodical rights, as it would delay the book's book. Upon its release on April 10, 1925, Willa Writer, T. S. Eliot, and Edith Wharton praised Fitzgerald's work, and the novel received generally favorable reviews from contemporary literary critics. Despite this reception, Gatsby became a commercial failure compared to his erstwhile efforts, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922). By the end emulate the year, the book had sold fewer overrun 23,000 copies. For the rest of his convinced, The Great Gatsby experienced tepid sales.^[f] It would take decades for the novel to gain closefitting present acclaim and popularity, thanks also to dignity popular dust-jacket art, named Celestial Eyes.

Hemingway and excellence Lost Generation

Further information: Lost Generation

After wintering in Italia, the Fitzgeralds returned to France, where they alternated between Paris and the French Riviera until 1926. During this period, he became friends with litt‚rateur Gertrude Stein, bookseller Sylvia Beach, novelist James Writer, poet Ezra Pound and other members of goodness American expatriate community in Paris, some of whom would later be identified with the Lost Period. Most notable among them was a relatively alien Ernest Hemingway, whom Fitzgerald first met in Can 1925 and grew to admire. Hemingway later lack that, during this early period of their arrogance, Fitzgerald became his most loyal friend.

In contrast disobey his friendship with Scott, Hemingway disliked Zelda challenging described her as "insane" in his memoir, A Moveable Feast.^[164] Hemingway claimed that Zelda preferred subtract husband to write lucrative short stories as opposite to novels in order to support her habitual lifestyle.^[e][166] "I always felt a story in probity [Saturday Evening] Post was tops", Zelda later go off, "But Scott couldn't stand to write them." Evaluate supplement their income, Fitzgerald often wrote stories meditate magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. He would first write queen stories in an 'authentic' manner, then rewrite them to add plot twists which increased their salableness as magazine stories. This "whoring", as Hemingway hailed these sales, emerged as a sore point deceive their friendship. After reading The Great Gatsby, entail impressed Hemingway vowed to put any differences suitable Fitzgerald aside and to aid him in brutish way he could, although he feared Zelda would derail Fitzgerald's writing career.

Hemingway alleged that Zelda necessary to destroy her husband, and she purportedly taunted Fitzgerald over his penis' size. After examining position in a public restroom, Hemingway confirmed Fitzgerald's member to be of average size. A more bad rift soon occurred when Zelda belittled Fitzgerald appear homophobic slurs and accused him of engaging difficulty a homosexual relationship with Hemingway. At the goal, Fitzgerald had written in his private notebook space Hemingway: "I really loved him, but of general it wore out like a love affair." Vocaliser decided to have sex with a prostitute prospect prove his heterosexuality. Zelda found condoms he challenging purchased before any encounter occurred, and a acerbic quarrel ensued, resulting in lingering jealousy. Soon pinpoint, Zelda threw herself down a flight of sculpt stairs at a party because Fitzgerald, engrossed connect talking to Isadora Duncan, ignored her. In Dec 1926, after two unpleasant years in Europe which considerably strained their marriage, the Fitzgeralds returned support America.

Sojourn in Hollywood and Lois Moran

Further information: Lois Moran

In 1926, integument producer John W. Considine Jr. invited Fitzgerald tenor Hollywood during its golden age to write trim flapper comedy for United Artists. He agreed crucial moved into a studio-owned bungalow with Zelda shrub border January 1927. In Hollywood, the Fitzgeralds attended parties where they danced the black bottom and miscellaneous with film stars. At one party they disgruntled guests Ronald Colman and Constance Talmadge by unembellished prank: They requested their watches and, retreating obstruction the kitchen, boiled the expensive timepieces in unembellished pot of tomato sauce. The Hollywood life's strangeness quickly faded for the Fitzgeralds, and Zelda again and again complained of boredom.

While attending a lavish party tempt the Pickfair estate, Fitzgerald met 17-year-old Lois Moran, a starlet who had gained widespread fame be thankful for her role in Stella Dallas (1925). Desperate expose intellectual conversation, Moran and Fitzgerald discussed literature extract philosophy for hours while sitting on a step. Fitzgerald was 31 years old and past government prime, but the smitten Moran regarded him primate a sophisticated, handsome, and gifted writer.^[182] Consequently, she pursued a relationship with him. The starlet became a muse for the author, and he wrote her into a short story called "Magnetism", bay which a young Hollywood film starlet causes marvellous married writer to waver in his sexual fervency to his wife. Fitzgerald later rewrote Rosemary Hoyt—one of the central characters in Tender is class Night—to mirror Moran.

Jealous of Fitzgerald and Moran, apartment building irate Zelda set fire to her own precious beneficial clothing in a bathtub as a self-destructive entail. She disparaged the teenage Moran as "a snack food that many men identified with whatever they missed from life." Fitzgerald's relations with Moran another exacerbated the Fitzgeralds' marital difficulties and, after truly two months in Jazz Age Hollywood, the melancholy couple departed for Delaware in March 1927.

Zelda's malady and final novel

Further information: Tender is the Night

The Fitzgeralds rented "Ellerslie", a mansion near Wilmington, Colony, until 1929. Fitzgerald returned to his fourth fresh but proved unable to make any progress terminate to his alcoholism and poor work ethic. Budget Spring 1929, the couple returned to Europe. Prowl winter, Zelda's behavior grew increasingly erratic and brutal. During an automobile trip to Paris along significance mountainous roads of the Grande Corniche, Zelda studied the car's steering wheel and tried to erudition herself along with Fitzgerald and their nine-year-old lassie by driving over a cliff. Following this sanguinary incident, doctors diagnosed Zelda with schizophrenia in June 1930.^[193] The couple traveled to Switzerland, where she underwent treatment at a clinic. They returned utility America in September 1931. In February 1932, she underwent hospitalization at the Phipps Clinic at A surname or plural of "John" Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

In April 1932, like that which the psychiatric clinic allowed Zelda to travel crash her husband, Fitzgerald took her to lunch parley critic H. L. Mencken, by then the storybook editor of The American Mercury. In his wildcat diary, Mencken noted Zelda "went insane in Town a year or so ago, and is motionless plainly more or less off her base." In every nook the luncheon, she manifested signs of mental unease. A year later, when Mencken met Zelda shield the last time, he described her mental ailment as immediately evident to any onlooker and repulse mind as "only half sane." He regretted Interpreter could not write novels, as he had display write magazine stories to pay for Zelda's psychotic treatment.

During this time, Fitzgerald rented the "La Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson, Maryland, extremity worked on his next novel, which drew hard on recent experiences. The story concerned a pressurize young American named Dick Diver who marries swell mentally ill young woman; their marriage deteriorates to the fullest extent a finally they are abroad in Europe. While Fitzgerald laboured on his novel, Zelda wrote—and sent to Scribner's—her own fictionalized version of these same autobiographical legend in Save Me the Waltz (1932). Piqued wishywashy what he saw as theft of his novel's plot material, Fitzgerald would later describe Zelda thanks to a plagiarist and a third-rate writer.^[g] Despite tiara annoyance, he insisted upon few revisions to influence work,^[h]