1918

  On leave from the army in February, finishes novel, “The Romantic Egotist,” at the Cottage Club in Princeton and sends it to Shane Leslie, who has agreed to recommend it to his publisher, Charles Scribner’s Sons. Reports in March to 45th Infantry Regiment at Camp Zachary Taylor, near Louisville; in April, regiment is transferred to Camp Gordon in Georgia, and in June, to Camp Sheridan, outside Montgomery, Alabama. In July, at a dance at the Country Club of Montgomery, meets Zelda Sayre, eighteen-year-old daughter of a justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Scribner’s rejects “The Romantic Egotist” in August; Fitzgerald submits a revised version, which is rejected in October. War ends on November 11, as Fitzgerald is waiting to embark for France with his regiment. Continues courtship of Zelda Sayre, who is reluctant to commit to marriage because of his lack of income and prospects.

  1919

  Father Fay dies on January 10. Fitzgerald is discharged from the army, moves to New York in February, and takes job at Barron Collier advertising agency writing trolley-car ads. Writes fiction and poetry at night, accumulating 112 rejection slips. The Smart Set accepts “Babes in the Woods,” revised version of story published in 1917 issue of the Lit, paying him $30 (story appears in September). Sends Zelda his mother’s engagement ring in March, but cannot convince her to marry him during visits to Montgomery, April–June. During his last visit, Zelda breaks off the engagement. Quits job and returns to parents’ house in St. Paul, determined to rewrite novel and have it accepted for publication. Sends novel, now titled This Side of Paradise, to editor Maxwell Perkins at Scribner’s in September. Perkins writes on September 16 that firm has accepted it: “The book is so different that it is hard to prophesy how it will sell but we are all for taking a chance and supporting it with vigor.” Revises several of his rejected stories; four are accepted by The Smart Set, two by Scribner’s Magazine, and one by The Saturday Evening Post. Earns $879 from his writing by the end of the year. During a trip to New York in November, engages Harold Ober as his agent. Visits Zelda in Montgomery.

  1920

  With Harold Ober’s assistance, begins to sell stories regularly to The Saturday Evening Post, which pays $400 each for them; by February, they have bought six. Reads Samuel Butler’s Note-Books and H. L. Mencken’s essays. Spends January in New Orleans writing stories and reading proofs of his novel, then moves back to New York in February. Sells story “Head and Shoulders” to Metro Films for $2,500. This Side of Paradise is published March 26; it sells three thousand copies in three days, and makes its author a celebrity. Marries Zelda in vestry of New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral on April 3. Develops friendships with Mencken and George Jean Nathan, editors of The Smart Set. Reads Mark Twain. In May, Metropolitan Magazine takes option on his stories at $900 per story and, eventually, publishes four. Rents house in Westport, Connecticut, and in July takes car trip to Montgomery. Scribner’s publishes Flappers and Philosophers, collection of eight stories, September 10. Rents apartment on West 59th Street in New York in October and works on second novel.

  1921

  Zelda discovers she is pregnant in February. In May, they sail for Europe, visiting England (where they have tea with John Galsworthy), Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome, returning in July to the U.S., where they live in St. Paul. Second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, begins to run serially in Metropolitan Magazine in September. Daughter Frances Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald is born on October 26.

  1922

  The Beautiful and Damned published by Scribner’s March 4; it receives mixed reviews and sells forty thousand copies in a year. Begins work on play. Moves to Great Neck, Long Island, where he begins close friendships with Ring Lardner and John Dos Passos. Tales of the Jazz Age, short-story collection, published by Scribner’s on September 22. Reads Dostoevsky and Dickens.

  1923

  Sells first option on his stories to Hearst organization for $1,500 per story. Receives $10,000 for film rights to This Side of Paradise. Play The Vegetable is published by Scribner’s on April 27. Begins work on third novel. The Vegetable opens for pre-Broadway tryout in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on November 19, is received badly, and closes almost immediately, leaving its author in debt. Starts selling stories to The Saturday Evening Post for $1,250 each. Earns $28,759.78 from his writing for the year, but spends more.

  1924

  Sails for France in May to complete novel, settling on the Riviera. Zelda becomes romantically involved with French naval aviator Edouard Jozan in July; although the relationship ends quickly, Fitzgerald later writes, “I knew something had happened that could never be repaired.” Meets Gerald and Sara Murphy during the summer. In October, recommends the work of Ernest Hemingway to Perkins and Scribner’s. After sending manuscript of new novel to Scribner’s in late October, goes to Rome and Capri for winter. Drinks heavily and quarrels constantly with Zelda.

  1925

  Extensively revises novel in galley proof in January and February, changing title to The Great Gatsby. Moves to Paris in April. The Great Gatsby is published by Scribner’s on April 10, receives mostly favorable reviews, but sales are disappointing. Meets Hemingway for first time at the Dingo bar in Montparnasse and subsequently takes trip to Lyon with him. Has tea with Edith Wharton at her home outside Paris in July. Through Hemingway, meets Gertrude Stein, Robert McAlmon (founder of Contact Editions publishers), and Sylvia Beach (owner of Shakespeare & Co. bookstore in Paris). Spends part of summer (“1000 parties and no work”) on the Riviera, where his friends include writers Dos Passos, Max Eastman, Archibald MacLeish, and Floyd Dell and movie star Rudolph Valentino. Returns to Paris in September and spends a great deal of time with Hemingway.

  1926

  All the Sad Young Men, short-story collection, is published by Scribner’s on February 26. Returns to the Riviera in March and begins work on new novel. Encourages Scribner’s to publish Hemingway’s novels The Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises. Reads draft of The Sun Also Rises in July and convinces Hemingway to eliminate the first two chapters. Returns to U.S. in December, spending Christmas in Montgomery.

  1927

  Spends first two months of year in Hollywood, under contract to United Artists to write flapper comedy for Constance Talmadge; script, “Lipstick,” is eventually rejected. Meets and is infatuated with seventeen-year-old Hollywood starlet Lois Moran; also meets producer Irving Thalberg, Lillian Gish, John Barrymore, and Richard Barthelmess. With help of Princeton roommate John Biggs, Jr., rents Ellerslie, Greek Revival–style mansion outside Wilmington, Delaware. Zelda begins ballet lessons with director of Philadelphia Opera Ballet and also writes magazine articles. Fitzgerald’s income from writing for year totals $29,757.87, a new high.

  1928

  Goes to Paris for the summer in April. Zelda continues ballet studies there with Lubov Egorova. Writes nine Basil Duke Lee stories for The Saturday Evening Post, which earn him $31,500. Meets James Joyce at dinner given by Sylvia Beach in June. Later in summer, meets Thornton Wilder and heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney, who are on a walking tour of Europe together. Returns to U.S. in October and resumes work on novel. Attends Princeton–Yale football game in Princeton on November 19 with Hemingway and his wife, Pauline.

  1929

  Gives up lease on Ellerslie in spring and returns to Europe, renting apartment in Paris in April. Zelda resumes ballet lessons with Egorova and also publishes series of short stories in College Humor. Fitzgerald reads typescript of Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms in June and offers suggestions for revisions, all of which Hemingway ridicules but some of which he takes. Rents villa in Cannes from July to September. Now is paid $4,000 per story by The Saturday Evening Post. Returns to Paris in October and lives in rented apartment. Works on novel, while Zelda continues her ballet lessons and writing.

  1930

  Travels with Zelda to North Africa in February. Her behavior shows signs of extreme stress, and on April 23, she enters Malmaison clinic outside Paris. Discharges herself on May 11 to resume ballet lessons, then attempts suicide and enters Val-Mont clinic in Glion, Switzerland, on May 22. After being diagnosed as schizophrenic by Dr. Oscar Forel, she is transferred in June to Forel’s Les Rives de Prangins clinic on Lake Geneva. Fitzgerald spends summer traveling between Paris and Switzerland. Meets Thomas Wolfe in Paris and later spends time with him in Switzerland. In order to pay for Zelda’s treatment, writes and sells stories to The Saturday Evening Post, earning $32,000 for the year from eight stories, among them “Babylon Revisited,” published in December. Spends fall at Hotel de la Paix in Lausanne and has brief affair with Englishwoman Bijou O’Conor.

  1931

  Father dies in January in Washington and Fitzgerald goes home for funeral. After visits to Montgomery and New York, returns to Europe and finds Zelda’s condition improved; she becomes an outpatient and is allowed to take trips to Paris and the Austrian Tyrol, then is discharged from Prangins on September 15. Sails for U.S. with Zelda on September 19, and settles in Montgomery. Goes to Hollywood in November after being offered $1,200 a week by M-G-M to work on a Jean Harlow movie, leaving Zelda in Montgomery to be with her ailing father, who dies on November 17. Returns to Montgomery for Christmas.

  1932

  Takes Zelda in January on vacation to Florida and she works on a novel. Zelda has relapse on trip back to Montgomery, and enters Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore on February 12. Fitzgerald remains in Montgomery to work on his novel. Zelda finishes her novel while at the Phipps Clinic and, after Fitzgerald comes to Baltimore to help her revise it, Scribner’s accepts it. Rents La Paix, Victorian-style house on the Turnbull estate in Towson, just outside Baltimore, in May. Zelda is discharged from Phipps on June 26. In August, Fitzgerald spends time at Johns Hopkins Hospital with what is diagnosed as typhoid fever (will eventually be hospitalized there eight more times from 1933 to 1937 for alcoholism and chronic inactive fibroid tuberculosis). Zelda’s novel Save Me the Waltz is published October 7; it receives bad reviews and sells very poorly. Resumes serious work on his novel, while Zelda paints and writes play, Scandalabra.

  1933

  Scandalabra is produced by the Junior Vagabonds, Baltimore amateur little theater, in the spring. In September, Ring Lardner dies and Fitzgerald writes tribute for The New Republic. Sends new novel, Tender Is the Night, to Scribner’s in late October.

  1934

  Tender Is the Night serialized in Scribner’s Magazine, January–April, and is published on April 12, receiving largely favorable reviews and selling well. While working on revising the book in New York in January and February, spends time with John O’Hara and with Dorothy Parker. Zelda reenters Phipps Clinic on February 12 and later is transferred to Craig House in Beacon, New York (“I left my capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda’s sanitarium”). Fitzgerald arranges showing of her paintings at art gallery in New York in March and April, and she is permitted to attend opening. When her condition deteriorates, Zelda is admitted to the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital outside Baltimore on May 19. Fitzgerald begins to sell stories and articles to recently established magazine Esquire, which pays $250 per piece.

  1935

  Travels to Tryon, North Carolina, in February in attempt to improve his health. Taps at Reveille, short-story collection, published by Scribner’s on March 10. Spends summer in Asheville, North Carolina, at the Grove Park Inn, where he has affair with Beatrice Dance, who is married. Returns to Baltimore in September and lives in rented apartment. Spends winter in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

  1936

  Writes three confessional articles, “The Crack-Up,” “Pasting It Together,” and “Handle With Care,” which appear in Esquire, February–­April, and arouse considerable consternation among his friends. Zelda is transferred to Highland Hospital in Asheville on April 6, and Fitzgerald spends summer at Grove Park Inn to be near her. Mother dies in August, but Fitzgerald is unable to attend funeral. Daughter enters Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Connecticut, in September. On his fortieth birthday in September is interviewed by Michel Mok of the New York Post. Subsequent article is headlined “Scott Fitzgerald, 40, Engulfed in Despair”; after it appears, Fitzgerald attempts suicide with overdose of morphine. Through Perkins, meets Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings when she comes to Asheville. Spends Christmas holidays in Johns Hopkins Hospital recovering from influenza and heavy drinking.

  1937

  Spends first months of year at Oak Hall Hotel in Tryon, North Carolina. Has great difficulty selling stories; his debts exceed $40,000, with $12,000 owed to his agent, Harold Ober. Hired as a screenwriter by M-G-M in July for six months at $1,000 per week. Rents small apartment at Garden of Allah, 8152 Sunset Boulevard, in Hollywood. Meets Sheilah Graham, twenty-eight-year-old Englishwoman who writes a Hollywood gossip column, at a party soon after his arrival, and they begin an affair. Works on film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel Three Comrades. Though it is extensively altered by producer Joseph Mankiewicz, his work on it contributes to renewal of his M-G-M contract (will be only screenplay for which he receives on-screen credit).

  1938

  Visits Zelda in January and takes her to Florida and Montgomery. Returns to Hollywood, and works from February to May on “Infidelity,” movie for Joan Crawford, which is never produced. During daughter’s spring vacation, takes her and Zelda to Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Virginia, but gets drunk and behaves badly. Moves to house at 114 Malibu Beach in April. Daughter is accepted at Vassar College. Fitzgerald works from May to October on screenplay of Claire Booth Luce’s play The Women but is eventually replaced. Moves to Encino in November and rents small house on Belly Acres estate of actor Edward Everett Horton. Hires Frances Kroll as his secretary. Plans educational curriculum, “College of One,” for Sheilah Graham, a two-year course in the arts and humanities that he participates in by tutoring her as well as assigning readings. Begins work in November on Madame Curie, film for Greta Garbo.

  1939

  Plans for Madame Curie are shelved in January, and after he is loaned to David O. Selznick to work very briefly on Gone With the Wind, Fitzgerald learns that M-G-M is dropping its option after eighteen months. Becomes freelance screenwriter and socializes in Hollywood with, among others, Nathanael West and S. J. Perelman. Hired by producer Walter Wanger of United Artists to collaborate with recent Dartmouth graduate Budd Schulberg on screenplay of Winter Carnival; they take a disastrous trip to Dartmouth College in February, during which Fitzgerald is drunk the entire time, and they are both fired. Goes on trip to Cuba with Zelda in April, and is so drunk and ill that she has to take him to New York, where he is hospitalized before returning to California. Begins work on a novel about Hollywood, with main character, Monroe Stahr, based on Irving Thalberg (never completed, it is edited by Edmund Wilson and published posthumously in 1941 as The Last Tycoon). Receives intermittent but brief screenwriting assignments but falls deeper in debt, eventually severing ties with longtime agent Harold Ober because Ober refuses to lend him any more money; becomes his own agent.

  1940

  Begins to publish series of stories in Esquire about Pat Hobby, a hack Hollywood writer, for which he receives $250 per story; ultimately, Esquire publishes seventeen Pat Hobby stories, one in each monthly number from January 1940 to July 1941. Writes “Cosmopolitan,” screen adaptation of his story “Babylon Revisited,” but it is never used. Moves in May to apartment at 1403 Laurel Avenue in Hollywood, a block from Sheilah Graham’s apartment, and works intensively on his novel through the summer and fall. Suffers heart attack in late November and is ordered to rest in bed. Moves to Sheilah Graham’s apartment, where he dies, apparently of a second heart attack, on December 21. With Zelda’s approval, decision is made to bury Fitzgerald with his father’s family in Rockville, Maryland, but he is refused burial at St. Mary’s Church cemetery because he was not a practicing Catholic at his death. Buried December 27 at Rockville Union Cemetery.

  Note on the Texts

  This volume brings together F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel, The Great Gatsby (1925); four stories from his third collection, All the Sad Young Men (1926)—“The Rich Boy,” “Winter Dreams,” “Absolution,” and “Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les”—that were written around the time Fitzgerald was working on The Great Gatsby and exploring similar themes; and a selection of thirteen letters between Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner’s, concerning the composition, editing, and publication of his novel. New, corrected texts of The Great Gatsby and the selected stories—which appear in the order Fitzgerald arranged them in for All the Sad Young Men—have been prepared for Library of America by James L. W. West III. The texts for all selections are described below.

  In the late spring of 1922, while living at the resort town of White Bear Lake, near his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald began work on the novel that was to become The Great Gatsby. He had recently finished correcting the proofs of Tales of the Jazz Age, his second collection of short stories, and was keen to get to work on a new book. In a letter dated June 20, 1922, he wrote to Maxwell Perkins, informing him that the novel would have a “catholic element” and would be set in “the middle west and New York of 1885.” Four months later, Fitzgerald moved his family to Great Neck, Long Island, where he worked sporadically on the manuscript during the next year and a half. His progress was interrupted by other creative projects—first by the writing and production of his play, The Vegetable, and then, after its pre-Broadway flop in November 1923, by the composition of magazine stories to get himself out of debt.