

Scott composed The Great Gatsby and Zelda learned to paint. Soon after, the family moved to Long Island, New York, but faced with financial ruin due to their excessive spending habits, the family moved to France in 1924 where F. Paul, Minnesota, the couple welcomed Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald to their family. On Valentine's Day in 1921, Zelda learned she was pregnant.

Due to the instant success of This Side of Paradise, the duo became overnight celebrities and indulged in the exuberance of the Roaring Twenties. The couple married on Apin New York City - just one week after his first book hit the market. Scott’s marriage proposal after Scribner’s agreed to publish his book, This Side of Paradise. He was captivated by Zelda’s audacious spirit and brash risqué demeanor, but due to his inferior social standing, the debutante declined his initial marriage proposal in 1919. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in Montgomery. In 1918, she graduated from Sidney Lanier High School and soon after she met F. As a teenager, Zelda was a talented dancer and socialite who challenged the gender norms of her time by drinking, smoking and spending much of her time with boys. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was born in Montgomery, Alabama on July 24, 1900. The daughter of a prominent judge, Anthony Dickinson Sayre (1858–1931), who served on the Supreme Court of Alabama, and Minnie Buckner Machen Sayre, she was the youngest of five children and lived a youthful life of privilege. As an adult, Frances would have her own career as a writer and become an active member of the Democratic Party. Scott had one child, a daughter they named Frances Scott Fitzgerald in 1921. She was working on her second unfinished novel, Caesar's Things, at the time of her death. She is buried with her husband in Old Saint Mary's Catholic Church Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland. (Photo: Bettman via Getty Images)ĭue to Zelda’s failing health, she was unable to attend her daughter’s wedding in 1943, but after the birth of her grandson, Zelda was reinvigorated and began to paint again in the last years of her life in Montgomery at her family’s homestead. Ultimately, however, her mental health began to fail and, on March 10, 1948, she died tragically in a fire at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.
