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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald lived the life of a shooting
star; he and wife Zelda represented much of the spirit of
what has become known as "the roaring 20s."
Fitzgerald's autobiographical novel This Side of Paradise,
published in 1920, brought him immediate fame and fortune
and won him his great love Zelda Sayre, daughter of a State
Supreme Court Justice.
Together they moved to New York City--a life of parties
and extravagant living, until they fell deeply into debt
and then moved to Europe, where they became a part of a
circle of expatriate writers such as Ernest Hemingway and
Gertrude Stein.
During this time in Europe, in 1925, Fitzgerald published
The Great Gatsby.
It was not until 1937 that Fitzgerald published his next
novel, Tender is the Night. It was not well-received
in America and the flamboyant couple's finances eroded,
Fitzgerald suffering from alcoholism and Zelda from a mental
instability that caused her to spend the rest of her life
in a sanitorium.
Fitzgerald died in the midst of writing a novel about Hollywood
The Last Tycoon, which was published posthumously
in 1941.
He documented the downward spiral of his life in a book
of essays The Crack-Up, published posthumously in
1945.
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