F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was educated at Princeton University and served in the United States Army during World War I. His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), was a national bestseller; Fitzgerald followed it with three more complete novels and hundreds of popular short stories. The Great Gatsby (1925), a timeless story of social class, race, and gender in America, remains his best-known work. Fitzgerald was living in Los Angeles, working on movie screenplays and a novel he called The Love of the Last Tycoon, when he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1941, at the age of 44.

"Smart, sophisticated, and evocative." "His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings." -- Ernest Hemingway "His writing is a kind of subdued magic, controlled and exquisite, the sort of thing you get from good string quartets." -- Raymond Chandler