Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American novelist and short-story writer closely associated with the Jazz Age. Born in St Paul, Minnesota, he attended Princeton University but left without graduating. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, published in 1920, brought him early literary and commercial success. Fitzgerald’s fiction frequently examined wealth, social status, romantic aspiration and the tensions beneath the prosperity of the 1920s.

His best-known novel, The Great Gatsby, was published in 1925 and follows the wealthy and enigmatic Jay Gatsby’s pursuit of an idealised past. Fitzgerald also wrote The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night and numerous short stories, often to support himself financially. His marriage to Zelda Sayre was marked by periods of instability and illness. Fitzgerald later worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter and died in Los Angeles in 1940. His reputation grew substantially after his death.