William F. Fitzgerald William F. Fitzgerald William Francis Fitzgerald (February 7, 1846 – May 12, 1903) was an American jurist who served on the Federal bench as an Associate Justice of the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court, as well as at the state level as an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. Other positions he held include California Attorney General and judge of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County. Fitzgerald was born February 7, 1846 in Jackson, Mississippi. He was educated in his hometown's public schools until the age of 12 when his work as a newsboy prompted a patron to sponsor
F. Scott Fitzgerald T. S. Eliot to write, in a letter to Fitzgerald, "It seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James ..." Don Birnam, the protagonist of Charles Jackson's "The Lost Weekend", says to himself, referring to "The Great Gatsby", "There's no such thing ... as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it." In letters written in the 1940s, J. D. Salinger expressed admiration of Fitzgerald's work, and his biographer Ian Hamilton wrote that Salinger even saw himself for some time as "Fitzgerald's successor". Richard Yates, a writer often compared to