The Beautiful and Damned

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in 1896 into a well-to-do Catholic family living in St. Paul, Minnesota. His forenames were conferred on him by his proud but impecunious father in honor of a distant antecedent who had written the lyric for the United States' national anthem. At Princeton University he turned to writing, neglected his studies, and left in 1917 to join the army when America entered the First World War. He believed he would be killed at the front, but was sent not to Europe, but to a camp in Alabama, where he met Zelda Sayre and fell in love. His novels include "This Side of Paradise," "The Beautiful and Damned," "The Great Gatsby," and "Tender Is the Night." He was midway through a novel of Hollywood life, "The Love of the Last Tycoon," when he died in 1940.