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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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F. Scott Fitzgerald was the model of the American image in the nineteen twenties. He had wealth, fame, a beautiful wife, and an adorable daughter; all seemed perfect. Beneath the gilded façade, however, was an author who struggled with domestic and physical difficulties that plagued his personal life and career throughout its short span. This author helped to launch the theme that is so prevalent in his work; the human instinct to yearn for more, into the forefront of American literature, where it would remain a common topic of writing to this day. Far below the partying and drinking front of F. Scott Fitzgerald lay a common man who wrote from the heart, and held nothing back. On September 24, 1896 in a quiet neighborhood of St. Paul Minnesota, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born to Edward Fitzgerald and his wife, Mollie McQuillan Fitzgerald. Edward was from a wealthy old family in Maryland with relations to F. Scott’s namesake; Francis Scott Key. Mollie was a wealthy daughter of a native St. Paul family with extensive capital resources and social connections that extended across much of the northern Midwest (Lovelady, 1). The young couple had had two daughters before the birth of their son, but the first had died at age one, and the second at age three. F. Scott had one younger sister that survived, Anabelle, and she lived a long, complete life (Bruccoli, 11). F. Scott was often sick as a young child, and the family made frequent trips to the doctor (Bruccoli, 15). The
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