Like Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in "the provinces" of America: the midwest.

Shortly after Fitzgerald's birth, on September 24, 1896, the family moved to Buffalo, New York, and lived for a time in Syracuse.

Back in St. Paul, the young Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy, where he demonstrated a growing affinity for literature.

In 1911, Fitzgerald entered a Catholic boarding school in Hackensack, New Jersey-the Newman Academy, at which he spent two years.

The Great Gatsby appeared in 1925, and although Fitzgerald himself felt that he had at last produced a truly important work ("My book is wonderful," he wrote to Edmund Wilson from France) the book received mixed reviews from critics.

Illness, alcohol, and personal instability marked his last years; except for a continued close relationship with his daughter, and a rather poignant attraction to Sheila Graham, he seemed incapable of any sustained social contact.

In 1940 the second of two heart attacks killed F. Scott Fitzgerald.