Born in 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD dropped out of Princeton University in 1917 to join the army. He met the socialite Zelda Sayre while stationed in Alabama and married her in 1920 after the success of This Side of Paradise. Fame, money, and alcohol took their toll on the young couple. After Zelda was institutionalized, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood in 1937. His experiences there inspired the unfinished novel The Last Tycoon (1941). His major works include The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925), All the Sad Young Men (1926), and Tender is the Night (1934). Fitzgerald died of heart failure in Hollywood in 1940.

JAMES L. W. WEST III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Emeritus, at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King, among other works, and was for many years the General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald.