F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a Princeton dropout from St Paul who became famous at twenty-three with This Side of Paradise, married Zelda Sayre, and lived out the Jazz Age he named in New York and on the Riviera. The Great Gatsby of 1925, the story of a bootlegger’s love for a rich girl told by his neighbour, sold poorly and was rediscovered after his death as the American novel. He spent his last years writing Hollywood scripts, in debt, with Zelda in a sanatorium, and died of a heart attack at forty-four with The Last Tycoon half written. He kept a ledger of every dollar and every failure.