Zelda Fitzgerald

In 1920, she and Scott married at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and the couple became well-known for their wild behavior.

In 1921, Zelda gave birth to Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald. Not interested in domesticity or housekeeping, she presumably had an abortion when she became pregnant again in 1922. This incident found its way in Scott’s novel, ‘The Beautiful and Damned’.

Zelda died in a fire at the Highland Hospital in 1948 and was buried originally in Rockville, Maryland alongside Scott. She was survived by her only child, Scottie.

Zelda Fitzgerald was born in Montgomery, Alabama, the youngest of six children, to Minerva Buckner and Anthony Dickinson Sayre, a justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

An extremely active child, she took ballet lessons and enjoyed the outdoors. She was a bright student but was not too academically inclined. She was enrolled at the Sidney Lanier High School in 1914.

She graduated from Sidney Lanier High School having been voted the Prettiest and Most Attractive girl in her class. She met her future husband Scott Fitzgerald at a Montgomery Country Club Dance in 1918.

In 1922, asked to write a review of ‘The Beautiful and Damned’ for the New York Tribune, she revealed that Scott lifted material from her diaries in her typical cheeky fashion. This review was well written and she received offers to write for magazines.

In June 1922, she wrote an essay, ‘Eulogy On The Flapper’, for the ‘Metropolitan’ Magazine. In this essay, she mourned the decline of flapper lifestyle and defended her own unconventional and audacious existence.

She continued writing several short stories and articles and helped her husband write the play, ‘The Vegetable’, in 1923. The play flopped and due to their extravagant lifestyle, they found themselves in debt.

They moved to Antibes on the French Riviera where she became infatuated with a French aviator, Edouard Jozan. The affair blew away but her relation with her husband became embittered beyond repair.

Her short essay, ‘Does A Moment Of Revolt Come Sometime To Every Married Man?’, appeared in the magazine, ‘McCall's’, in 1924 and she started painting as a hobby.

‘Save Me the Waltz’, Zelda Fitzgerald’s only novel is a semi-autobiographical account of her life and marriage to Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1932, it was not well received and sold only 1392 copies.

‘The Collected Writings’, a comprehensive collection of her works published in 1991, is a confirmation of her place as a writer and consists of her farce, short stories, articles and letters.