F. Scott Fitzgerald:

Author John O’Hara once said that “[F. Scott] Fitzgerald was a better just plain writer than all of us put together.” Fitzgerald wasn’t only praised by his fellow writers; he was likely the most famous author to come out of the 1920s. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fame in the Roaring Twenties and beyond is due to the interesting exploits of his personal life and to the popularity of his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most famous fiction authors of the 1920s, and today is still known as one of the most influential writers in American Literary history. Fitzgerald’s life began simply enough, but the course of his life went far beyond this simple start. He was born in 1896 in St. Paul Minnesota, the “son of an alcoholic failure from Maryland and an adoring, intensely ambitious mother” (“Fitzgerald”). He attended Princeton University but never completed his education there; however, he published a series of novels, including his first in 1920 titled This Side of Paradise, followed by others such as The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) and his most famous, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Although Fitzgerald's novels were works of fiction, his writing was reflective of his personal life, including an often strained relationship with his wife.

Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda behaved like many others in the decade known as the Roaring Twenties. They partied hard and lived a life of excess. Fitzgerald, however, fought with alcoholism and struggled to make enough money to support this lavish lifestyle. Ultimately, he died of a heart attack in 1940, but within a decade of his passing, readers began to rave over what would eventually become his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby (“Fitzgerald”).

F. Scott Fitzgerald contributed numerous stories and novels to American literature, but his most important contribution to the 1920s and American society in general was the novel known as The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is the story of a man’s failed quest for love, wealth, and the American Dream, and it is by far Fitzgerald’s most famous work. In the novel, a man rises from a poor nobody to a multi-millionaire man of legend, all the while chasing a romance from his past. Although Gatsby’s story ends tragically, the book is arguably the most famous 20th century American novel ever written.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's contributions to American literature were important to the 1920s, but they will continue to live far beyond the time in which he wrote them. The Great Gatsby is still taught in classrooms all across the United States, and it has inspired a number of different film versions, the most recent of which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby himself. Clearly, the American public’s fascination with Fitzgerald’s themes of ambition, love lost, and the American Dream still resonate today, nearly a century after Gatsby's publication.

Works Cited

“Fitzgerald, F. Scott." The Reader's Companion to American History. 1991. History Study Center. Web. 9 Jan. 2011.

"Great Gatsby Trailer (2012) Movie Trailer HD." Youtube, uploaded by Movie Clips Coming Soon, 22 May 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rARN6agiW7o

“Quotations.” F. Scott Fitzgerald Centenary. University of South Carolina, 27 January 1997. Web. 4 January 2013.