F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories in the 1920’s-1940’s, known for his reckless expensive life as an adult, and tales written of people living in the Jazz Age. The Jazz Age was an era when jazz music and dance became popular in the 1920’s. This included youth of the time rebelling against traditional cultural norms with bold fashion fads, women smoking cigarettes and changing the way they were previously allowed to dress, open talk about sex, careless spending, etc. Representative of the Jazz Age was the Roaring Twenties, during which the nation’s total wealth doubled, thus causing Americans to now have increased disposable income, thus creating a new consumer society. This jump-started the irresponsible, …show more content…
He grew up in an upper-middle class family, spending most of his first decade living in Buffalo. His parents sent him to several different schools and academies, wanting him to have all the benefits of an upper-middle class living. At a young age Fitzgerald was a boy of unusual intelligence and drive, with an early interest in literature. As a teenager he attended St. Paul Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota from 1908 to 1911. During this time, his first piece of writing, a detective story, was published in the school newspaper. Many prominent adults in his early life noticed his talents with writing and encouraged him to pursue it. Through college he throughly dedicated himself to his writing. Unfortunately this came at the expense of his coursework, which caused him to be put on academic probation; in 1917, he dropped out of school to join the U.S. Army. Fearing he might die in World War I unfulfilling his literary dreams, he manically wrote a novel in the weeks before he had to report for …show more content…
Zelda accepted his proposal, but after some time broke it off because she wasn’t convinced Fitzgerald would be able to support her financially. By this time, Fitzgerald returned to his parent’s home in St. Paul to revise The Romantic Egoist, the novel he wrote before going to war. He revamped the story and renamed it This Side of Paradise, a semi-autobiography on his undergraduate years at Princeton. His now revised novel was accepted by Charles Scribner’s in 1919, and was published in March of 1920. It became an instant success, selling 41,075 copies in the first year! This launched Fitzgerald’s writing career and provided him a steady income. His new state of wealth suited Zelda’s wants and they resumed their engagement and married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. They had one child, a girl who they named Frances Scott Fitzgerald, in