F. Scott Fitzgerald F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American fiction writer, whose works helped to illustrate the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age. While he achieved popular success, fame, and fortune in his lifetime, he did not receive much critical acclaim until after his death. Perhaps the most notable member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s, Fitzgerald is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. He finished four novels: "This Side of Paradise", "The Beautiful and Damned", "The Great Gatsby", and "Tender Is
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