F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896.The son of a failed wicker furniture salesman, Edward Fitzgerald, and an Irish immigrant with a large inheritance, Mary "Mollie" McQuillan, Fitzgerald grew up in a solidly Catholic and upper middle class environment. Fitzgerald started writing at an early age. He was educated at St. Paul Academy, the Newman School, and Princeton University. His high school newspaper published his detective stories, …showed first 75 words of 607 total…

…showed last 75 words of 607 total…started writing again - scripts, short-stories, and the first draft of a new novel about Hollywood - when he suffered a heart attack and died in 1940 at the age of 44. While alive he thought of himself as a failure while he was most commonly recognized only as an extravagant drunk, who epitomized the excesses of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald's work did not earn the credibility and recognition it holds today until years after his death.