Zelda Fitzgerald

Author profile

born

in Montgomery, Alabama, The United States

July 24, 1900

died

March 10, 1948

gender

female

genre

Literature & Fiction, Short Stories

About this author

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Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre, was a novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper". After the success of his first novel This Side of Paradise (1920), the Fitzgeralds became celebrities. The newspapers of New York saw them as embodiments of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties: young, rich, beautiful, and energetic.

Zelda Sayre grew up in a wealthy and prim southern family. Even as a child her audacious behavior was the subject of Montgomery gossip. Shortly after finishing high school, she met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a dance. A whirlwind courtship ensued. Though he had professed his infatuation, she continued seeing other men. Despite fights and...more Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre, was a novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper". After the success of his first novel This Side of Paradise (1920), the Fitzgeralds became celebrities. The newspapers of New York saw them as embodiments of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties: young, rich, beautiful, and energetic.

Zelda Sayre grew up in a wealthy and prim southern family. Even as a child her audacious behavior was the subject of Montgomery gossip. Shortly after finishing high school, she met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a dance. A whirlwind courtship ensued. Though he had professed his infatuation, she continued seeing other men. Despite fights and a prolonged break-up, they married in 1920, and spent the early part of the decade as literary celebrities in New York. Later in the 1920s, they moved to Europe, recast as famous expatriates of the Lost Generation. While Scott received acclaim for The Great Gatsby and his short stories, and the couple socialized with literary luminaries like Ernest Hemingway, their marriage was a tangle of jealousy, resentment and acrimony. Scott used their relationship as material in his novels, even lifting snippets from Zelda's diary and assigning them to his fictional heroines. Seeking an artistic identity of her own, Zelda wrote magazine articles and short stories, and at 27 became obsessed with a career as a ballerina, practicing to exhaustion.

The strain of her tempestuous marriage, Scott's increasing alcoholism, and her growing instability presaged Zelda's admittance to a sanatorium in 1930. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia. While in a Maryland clinic, she wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz, which was published in 1932. Scott was furious that she had used material from their life together, though he had done the same, such as in Tender Is the Night, published in 1934; the two novels provide contrasting portrayals of the couple's failing marriage.

Back in America, Scott went to Hollywood where he tried screenwriting and began an affair with the movie columnist Sheilah Graham. In 1936, Zelda entered the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Scott died in Hollywood in 1940, having last seen Zelda a year and a half earlier. She spent her remaining years working on a second novel, which she never completed, and she painted extensively. In 1948, the hospital at which she had been a patient caught fire, causing her death. Interest in the Fitzgeralds resurged shortly after her death: the couple has been the subject of popular books, movies and scholarly attention. After a life as an emblem of the Jazz Age, Roaring Twenties, and Lost Generation, Zelda Fitzgerald posthumously found a new role: after a popular 1970 biography portrayed her as a victim of an overbearing husband, she became a feminist icon.(less)

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Zelda Fitzgerald's Books

Average rating: 3.84 · 1,268 ratings · 97 reviews · 8 distinct works · Similar authors

	Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald, Harry T. Moore (Introduction) 3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 avg rating — 687 ratings — published 1932 — 16 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald by Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jackson R. Bryer (Editor) 4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 491 ratings — published 1985 — 8 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Collected Writings by Zelda Fitzgerald, Mary Gordon (Introduction), Matthew J. Bruccoli (Editor) 4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 133 ratings — published 1991 — 5 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Scandalabra 3.2 of 5 stars 3.20 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1980	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bits of paradise. by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald 3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 avg rating — 40 ratings — published 1969 — 7 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tender is the Night / Save Me the Waltz by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald 3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1934	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pizcas de paraíso by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald 3.0 of 5 stars 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1973	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Zelda Fitzgerald…

Quotes by Zelda Fitzgerald

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

tags: love

6,608 people liked it

“She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, The Collected Writings

tags: boredom

1,179 people liked it

“I don't want to live, I want to love first and live incidentally.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

tags: incidental, life, love

326 people liked it

See all Zelda Fitzgerald's quotes »

Polls

What work of fiction would you like to read in June?

Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

6 votes, 37.5%

Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham

5 votes, 31.3%

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

2 votes, 12.5%

My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

2 votes, 12.5%

Rosa by Jonathan Rabb

1 vote, 6.3%

The Iron Heel by Jack London

0 votes, 0.0%

Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham

0 votes, 0.0%

16 total votes

20 comments

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