Of all the American Modernist writers with tragic lives, F. Scott Fitzgerald holds the franchise. A glittering success as a writer when he was just twenty-three, Fitzgerald died still a young man, at forty-four, most of his works out of print and his status as one of the finest and most popular American writers yet to be established.

Scott Fitzgerald was born at the family home on Laurel Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. He was the third child of Mollie McQuillan and Edward Fitzgerald. Their first two children died as infants and Scott, a lovely but sickly child, worried his mother with more than the normal slate of childhood illnesses. A sister, Annabel, was born in July 1901. From the record that survives

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First published 22 July 2003

Citation: Daniel, Anne M. "F. Scott Fitzgerald". The Literary Encyclopedia. 22 July 2003.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4922, accessed 9 February 2010.]