| 1896 | Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, the only son of Edward, a genteel, unsuccessful factory owner, and Mary (“Mollie”) McQuillan, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became a successful wholesale grocer in St. Paul. He is named after his father’s distant cousin, the author of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” |
| 1898 | Commercial failures force Edward to move his family to Buffalo, New York, where he takes a sales job with Proctor and Gamble. |
| 1899 | Sigmund Freud publishes Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams); the first edition carries the publication date 1900. |
| 1901 | Edward Fitzgerald is relocated with his family to Syracuse, New York. |
| 1905 | Einstein publishes significant physics papers, including one on the special theory of relativity. |
| 1907 | Artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque begin to develop cubism, an important new visual arts style. |
| 1908 | Edward Fitzgerald loses his job at Proctor and Gamble, and the family returns to St. Paul, where they are supported by Mollie’s inheritance. F. Scott Fitzgerald enters St. Paul’s Academy. |
| 1909 | Fitzgerald’s first published story, “The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage,” appears in his school journal. |
| 1911 | Fitzgerald enters the Newman School, an elite Catholic prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey. During his three years at Newman, he publishes three stories in the school literary magazine and writes and produces several plays. He meets Father Sigourney Fay, who recognizes and encourages his talents. |
| 1912 | C. G. Jung publishes Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (The Psychology of the Unconscious). |
| 1913 | He graduates from the Newman School and is accepted at Princeton University, despite an unexceptional academic record. At Princeton he befriends Edmund Wilson (who will become a critic and author) and John Peale Bishop (who will become a poet and novelist). Fitzgerald spends much of his time in extracurricular activities, including writing scripts and lyrics for the Triangle Club, Princeton’s drama club. D. H. Lawrence publishes Sons and Lovers. |
| 1914 | World War I begins. |
| 1915 | Fitzgerald meets and falls in love with Ginevra King, a young girl from a wealthy Chicago family. His affair with Ginevra, who is possibly a model for some of his fictional characters, amounts to several dates and a ream of passionate letters. Fitzgerald’s extracurricular activities take a toll on his grades, and he leaves Princeton, ostensibly because of illness. Europe is engulfed by war. |
| 1916 | Fitzgerald returns to Princeton. |
| 1917 | His relationship with Ginevra dies down. In January Fitzgerald. publishes The Debutante, a play inspired by his affair with her, in the Nassau Literary Magazine. America declares war against Germany, and Fitzgerald enlists in the army as a second lieutenant. He is stationed in Fort Leavenworth , Kansas, and begins writing a novel, The Romantic Egotist. T. S. Eliot publishes Prufrock and Other Observations. |
| 1918 | On leave from the army, Fitzgerald returns to Princeton and completes his novel. His mentor, author Shane Leslie, recommends it to Scribner’s. Fitzgerald is stationed first in Georgia and then near Montgomery, Alabama, where he meets Zelda Sayre, the wayward daughter of an Alabama state Supreme Court judge. His novel is rejected. World War I ends; Fitzgerald never sees active service. |
| 1919 | Fitzgerald is discharged from the army and becomes engaged to Zelda. Although he finds work in a New York advertising agency, Zelda breaks off their engagement, worried about his financial prospects. Fitzgerald returns to his parents’ house, where he rewrites his novel; retitled This Side of Paradise, it is accepted for publication by Scribner’s. Prohibition begins. |
| 1920 | Fitzgerald and Zelda renew their engagement. He publishes stories in the Saturday Evening Post and Smart Set. This Side of Paradise is published. Scott and Zelda are married in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. The newlyweds move to Westport, Connecticut, where Fitzgerald works on The Beautiful and Damned, and then to New York. Flappers and Philosophers, Fitzgerald’s first collection of short stories, is published. Following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment , women gain the right to vote. |
| 1921 | Scott and Zelda spend months traveling in England, France, and Italy. They return in August to Minnesota, where Zelda gives birth to a daughter, Frances Scott (“Scottie”). |
| 1922 | The Beautiful and Damned, about the dissipated life of an artist and his wife, is published. Another collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age, is published in September. The family moves to Great Neck, Long Island (New York). Fitzgerald’s drinking habit grows. T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and James Joyce’s Ulysses are published. |
| 1923 | The Vegetable, a play the Fitzgeralds thought would make them wealthy, is published but not produced. Jazz musician Duke Ellington first plays in New York. |
| 1924 | The family moves to the French Riviera, where Zelda has an affair with Edouard Jozan, a French pilot. Fitzgerald drafts his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. The Fitzgeralds befriend wealthy American expatriates Gerald and Sara Murphy. The Fitzgeralds spend several months in Rome. |
| 1925 | The Great Gatsby is published. Fitzgerald moves his family to Paris, where he meets Ernest Hemingway. Gangster Al Capone rises to the top of organized crime in Chicago. |
| 1926 | Fitzgerald publishes All the Sad Young Men, a collection of stories that includes one of his best, “The Rich Boy,” which examines how wealth influences character. The family spends most of the year in the Riviera, returning to America |
| 1927 | in December. Ernest Hemingway publishes The Sun Also Rises. Fitzgerald moves with Zelda to Hollywood, California, to write a screenplay. They move again, to Delaware, where Zelda begins ballet lessons. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is published. Charles Lindbergh completes the first nonstop, solo flight across the Atlantic. |
| 1928 | The Saturday Evening Post publishes “The Scandal Detectives ,” the first of a series of stories based on Fitzgerald’s youth. The family moves again to Paris, where Zelda’s ballet training damages her health and leads to marital problems. The family returns to Delaware in the fall. |
| 1929 | Once again the family goes back to Europe. The American stock market crashes, and the Great Depression begins. Zelda publishes “The Original Follies Girl” in College Humor. |
| 1930 | In April Zelda suffers the first of a series of nervous breakdowns and is sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland where she will spend the next sixteen months. |
| 1931 | Fitzgerald travels alone to America to attend his father’s funeral . He accepts an offer from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to work on a screenplay in Hollywood. |
| 1932 | Zelda suffers another collapse and is hospitalized in Baltimore . She will be an inpatient or an outpatient at a sanatorium for the rest of her life. Fitzgerald moves to Baltimore to join his wife. Zelda publishes an autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz, completed in the clinic. |
| 1933 | Prohibition ends. Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany . Gertrude Stein publishes The Autobiograpby of Alice B. Toklas. |
| 1934 | Zelda suffers a third breakdown and again enters a sanatorium . Fitzgerald publishes Tender Is the Night, a novel about a psychiatrist in Europe who marries one of his patients and eventually unravels. Henry Miller publishes Tropic of Cancer. |
| 1935 | Taps at Reveille, Fitzgerald’s fourth short-story collection, is published. Unsettled, he moves back and forth between Baltimore and North Carolina. |
| 1936 | Fitzgerald’s confessional “Crack-Up” essays, which describe his sense of emotional depletion, appear in Esquire. |
| 1937 | Financially strained, Fitzgerald accepts a lucrative scriptwriting contract with MGM. In December, the six-month contract is renewed for one year. He starts writing the screenplay for Three Comrades, his only script to make it to film. He begins an affair with gossip columnist Sheilah Graham that will last until his death. |
| 1939 | Fitzgerald, whose MGM contract had not been renewed at the end of 1938, starts work on a screenplay for United Artists but is fired after a drinking binge. Later that year he works as a freelance screenwriter in Hollywood. He starts The Last Tycoon, a novel about life in Hollywood. He is hospitalized twice following drinking bouts. World War II begins. |
| 1940 | With The Last Tycoon only half finished, F. Scott Fitzgerald dies of a heart attack on December 21, in Graham’s Hollywood apartment. He is buried in the Rockville Union Cemetery in Maryland. |
| 1941 | The Last Tycoon is published. |
| 1948 | Zelda Fitzgerald dies in a fire at a hospital in North Cartery olina. |
