Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in 1896 St. Paul, Minn.

Father was a well dressed, elegant failure, worked for Proctor and Gamble as a traveling salesman but in 1908 he was fired leaving the family to ask for family charity.  (charity)

1911 New Jersey pep school (Catholic), read too many books, acting, dating, football and was not interested in academics

1913 Princeton, sacrificed academics for extracurricular activities such as Triangle Club

1917 "joined army", Montgomery, Alabama after all but flunking out of college

1918 (July) met Zelda Sayre at country club dance, she was an 18 year old woman who was high-spirited and embodied The Romantic Egoist. She was the girl that all the men wanted, making her all the more attractive to the socially conscious, Fitzgerald.

1919 New York, he wrote This Side of Paradise

1920 Got married, the wedding was an enormous event and the reception after is legendary,

1920 Flappers and Philosophers

1921 Moved to France

1922 The Beautiful and the Damned, Tales of the Jazz Age, moved to West Egg in Long Island

1923 Moved to Europe

1925 The Great Gatsby

1930 Moved to U. S. , Baltimore after Zelda and Scott's physical and emotional breakdown. Zelda would never completely recover.

1934 Tender is the Night

1935 The Crack-Up

1937-1940 Hollywood, looked older, back writing, seeing Sheila Graham, a Hollywood gossip columnist. Zelda was institutionalized and their daughter was in private schools.

1938 MGM dropped Scott, The Last Tycoon

1939 Nearly everything he wrote is out of print

1940 Buried in Baltimore

1947 Zelda died