Novelist · 1896 – 1940
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Key Takeaways
- Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, often called the great American novel.
- He was the defining chronicler of the 1920s 'Jazz Age', a term he popularized.
- His work explores the glamour and emptiness of the American Dream.
- His fame faded before his early death, then soared afterward.
F. Scott Fitzgerald gave the Roaring Twenties their voice — and even their name, coining “the Jazz Age” for the glittering, reckless decade he both adored and saw through. His novel The Great Gatsby is often called the quintessential American novel.
The American Dream and its shadow
In Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby throws lavish parties in pursuit of a lost love, and the dream curdles into tragedy. Beneath the champagne and the music, Fitzgerald exposed the emptiness at the heart of America’s promise of reinvention — in prose of shimmering beauty.
Failure into immortality
Fitzgerald’s early fame faded; he died in Hollywood at 44 believing himself forgotten, Gatsby barely selling. Yet his reputation rose after his death until he stood at the centre of the American canon. Friend and rival of Ernest Hemingway and heir to Mark Twain, this novelist of the modern era wrote a book now read by nearly every American.
Influence
Fitzgerald captured an entire era — its glamour, excess and hollowness — in prose of rare beauty, and The Great Gatsby became a permanent fixture of American literature.
Legacy
Neglected at his death, he is now central to the American canon, with The Great Gatsby among the most read novels in the country.
Major Works
- The Great Gatsby
- Tender Is the Night
- This Side of Paradise
Connections
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was F. Scott Fitzgerald?
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) was an American novelist, chronicler of the Jazz Age, best known for The Great Gatsby.
What is The Great Gatsby about?
It follows the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his longing for a lost love, a glittering yet tragic portrait of the American Dream in the 1920s.
Citations & Sources
People Like F.
Ernest Hemingway
82Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist and short-story writer whose spare, understated prose style revolutionized 20th-century fiction, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for works such as The Old Man and the Sea.
Why A friend, rival and fellow writer of the American 'Lost Generation'.
Mark Twain
84Mark Twain was an American writer and humorist, called the "father of American literature", whose novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn captured the voice of America and remain classics of world literature.
Why An earlier giant in the tradition of the great American novel.
James Joyce
82James Joyce was an Irish novelist whose experimental masterpiece Ulysses is widely regarded as the greatest novel of the 20th century, and whose innovations in language and stream of consciousness transformed modern literature.
Why A modernist contemporary whom Fitzgerald revered during his time in Paris.
Herman Melville
80Herman Melville was an American novelist and poet whose Moby-Dick, neglected in his lifetime, is now regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written and a towering achievement of American literature.
Why Also a novelist & writer · Active in the same era
Nathaniel Hawthorne
78Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short-story writer whose dark, morally probing fiction — above all The Scarlet Letter — explored sin, guilt and hypocrisy in Puritan New England and helped found the American novel.
Why Also a novelist & writer · Active in the same era
Toni Morrison
81Toni Morrison was an American novelist whose richly poetic explorations of Black American life — above all Beloved — won her the Pulitzer Prize and made her the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Why Also a novelist & writer · Active in the same era