F.Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda were the "It" couple of their generation, who lived life large. Unfortunately, their story had a tragic ending.

Scott & Zelda with daughter Scottie

Zelda met F. Scott Fitzgerald at one of the military dances, and he stood out from the crowd in his fancy Brooks Brothers uniform and cream-colored boots. Zelda said, He smelled like new goods. He told her that she looked like the heroine in the novel he was writing. They went on their first date on Zelda's birthday, July 24, 1918. She never forgot that day. They got engaged, but Zelda's parents didn't approve of Scott, because he didn't have any money. He moved to New York and tried desperately to publish his first novel so that he could make something of himself and marry her. The novel was rejected twice, so Scott quit his job in New York and moved home with his parents in St. Paul, Minnesota to rewrite it one more time. While he worked, Zelda wrote him letters about the men she had been dating and about how maybe they should break off the engagement. He quoted lines from her letters in his novel, which was about a man who loses a girl because he doesn't have enough money. He retitled it This Side of Paradise, and in September of 1919, he received word that it would be published...
By the time the stock market crashed in 1929, Fitzgerald had started to crash too. His marriage was coming apart--Zelda had her first nervous breakdown in 1930. The changes that came with the Great Depression made F. Scott Fitzgerald seem like ancient history, along with everything else from the "Roaring Twenties." He had written about the lives of the rich, and now he remained associated with them and had fallen out of favor. His books, including The Great Gatsby (1925), did not sell well. In 1929, the Saturday Evening Post paid him $4,000 per story, but his total royalties on seven books that year were only $31.77. In 1932, as the Great Depression was approaching its worst point, Fitzgerald was living in New York, a city that he loved. He said, "New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world."
Source: The Writer's Almanac

SCOTT FITZGERALD ON THE SECRET OF GREAT WRITING

These are actually a set of correspondence from Scott Fitzgerald on writing addressed to a friend's daughter and his own.

SCOTT FITZGERALD AND HIS 15 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER ON THE FAILURE OF FLAPPERS AS PARENTS

Scott Fitzgerald and his (then 15 year old) daughter discussing the failure of Flappers as parents.
BALTIMORE, Sept. 17 (AP)-The 12-year-old daughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose novel, "This Side of Paradise," dealt with the American flapper some years ago, thinks that most of the girls and boys about whom her father wrote are rather incompetent parents today.
Mr. Fitzgerald is inclined to agree with that opinion.

Originally posted in the New York Times in 1933.

The Real Life Towns That Inspired 'The Great Gatsby'

Vintage photos of Long Island's Mansions

F. Scott Fitzgerald's home becomes a landmark

A group of Minnesota book lovers dedicated his St. Paul birthplace as a National Literary Landmark