58 Facts About Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda Fitzgerald was an American novelist, painter, playwright, and socialite.

Zelda Fitzgerald's doctors diagnosed Zelda with schizophrenia, although later posthumous diagnoses posit bipolar disorder.

The critical and commercial failure of Save Me the Waltz disappointed Zelda Fitzgerald and led her to pursue her other interests as a playwright and a painter.

Disheartened, Zelda Fitzgerald next attempted to paint watercolors but, when her husband arranged their exhibition in 1934, the critical response proved equally disappointing.

Zelda Fitzgerald's body was identified by her dental records and one of her slippers.

Zelda Fitzgerald's novel Save Me the Waltz became the focus of literary studies exploring different facets of the work: how her novel contrasted with Scott's depiction of their marriage in Tender Is the Night, and how 1920s consumer culture placed mental stress on modern women.

At the time of Zelda Fitzgerald's birth, her family was a prominent and influential Southern clan who had been slave-holders before the American Civil War.

Consequently, Zelda Fitzgerald was unaccustomed to domestic labor or responsibilities of any kind.

Zelda Fitzgerald drank gin, smoked cigarettes, and spent much of her time flirting with boys.

At the time, Zelda Fitzgerald had been freshly rejected by his first love, Chicago socialite and heiress Ginevra King, due to his lack of financial prospects.

Zelda Fitzgerald often spoke of his ambition to become a famous novelist, and he sent her a chapter of a book he was writing.

At the time, Zelda dismissed Fitzgerald's remarks as mere boastfulness, and she concluded that he would never become a famous writer.

Zelda Fitzgerald expected to be sent to France, but he was instead assigned to Camp Mills, Long Island.

However, when Scott's attempts to become a published author faltered during the next four months, Zelda Fitzgerald became convinced that he could not support her accustomed lifestyle, and she broke off the engagement during the Red Summer of 1919.

Zelda Fitzgerald decided to make one last attempt to become a novelist and to stake everything on the success or failure of a book.

At the time of their wedding, Fitzgerald later claimed neither he nor Zelda still loved each other, and the early years of their marriage in New York City proved to be a disappointment.

One evening, while inebriated, they decided to visit the county morgue where they inspected the unidentified corpses and, on another evening, Zelda Fitzgerald insisted on sleeping in a dog kennel.

Uncertain of what to do with unwashed clothes, Zelda Fitzgerald had never sent them out for cleaning: she had simply tossed everything into the closet.

Zelda Fitzgerald's parents visited their Westport cottage soon after, but her father Judge Andrew Sayre took a dim view of the couples' constant partying and scandalous lifestyle.

In February 1921, while Scott labored on drafts of his inchoate second novel The Beautiful and Damned, Zelda Fitzgerald discovered she was pregnant.

Zelda Fitzgerald requested that the child be born on Southern soil in Alabama, but Fitzgerald adamantly refused.

The satirical review led to Zelda Fitzgerald receiving offers from other magazines to write stories and articles.

In June 1922, Metropolitan Magazine published an essay by Zelda Fitzgerald titled "Eulogy on the Flapper".

Ultimately, Zelda Fitzgerald would have three abortions during their marriage, and her sister Rosalind later questioned whether Zelda Fitzgerald's later mental deterioration was due to health side-effects of these unsafe procedures.

Zelda Fitzgerald openly referred to him with homophobic slurs and denounced him as a "fairy with hair on his chest".

Zelda Fitzgerald considered Hemingway's domineering macho persona to be merely a posture to conceal his homosexuality; in turn, Hemingway told Scott that Zelda was "insane".

Hemingway alleged that Zelda sought to destroy her husband, and she purportedly taunted Fitzgerald over his penis' size.

Hemingway claimed that Zelda Fitzgerald urged her husband to write lucrative short stories as opposed to novels in order to support her accustomed lifestyle.

Jealous of Moran, Zelda Fitzgerald set fire to her clothing in a bathtub as a self-destructive act.

Zelda Fitzgerald had the waywardness of a Southern belle and the lack of inhibitions of a child.

Much of the conflict between them stemmed from the boredom and isolation Zelda Fitzgerald experienced when Scott was writing.

One evening, Scott returned home to find an exhausted Zelda Fitzgerald seated on the floor and entranced with a pile of sand.

In October 1929, during an automobile trip to Paris along the mountainous roads of the Grande Corniche, Zelda Fitzgerald seized the car's steering wheel and tried to kill herself, her husband, and her 9-year-old daughter Scottie by driving over a cliff.

In February 1932, after an episode of hysteria, Zelda Fitzgerald insisted that she be readmitted to a mental hospital.

At the Phipps Clinic, Zelda Fitzgerald developed a bond with Dr Mildred Squires, a female resident.

Toward the end of February 1932, Zelda Fitzgerald shared fragments of her manuscript with Dr Squires, who wrote to Scott that the unfinished novel was vivid and had charm.

Zelda Fitzgerald sent the unaltered manuscript to Scott's editor, Maxwell Perkins, at Scribner's.

Zelda Fitzgerald was further upset to learn that Zelda's novel used the very same plot elements as his upcoming novel, Tender Is the Night.

In contrast to Scott's unadorned prose, Zelda Fitzgerald's writing style in Save Me the Waltz is replete with verbal flourishes and complex metaphors.

Zelda Fitzgerald remained in the hospital while Scott returned to Hollywood for a $1,000-a-week job with MGM in June 1937.

Zelda Fitzgerald repeatedly attempted sobriety, had depression, had violent outbursts, and attempted suicide.

Zelda Fitzgerald returned to the United States so exhausted and intoxicated that he required hospitalization.

Zelda Fitzgerald made some progress in Asheville, and in March 1940, four years after admittance, she was discharged to her mother's care.

Zelda Fitzgerald was nearly forty now, her friends were long gone, and the Fitzgeralds no longer had much money.

Zelda Fitzgerald wrote to his friend Edmund Wilson who agreed to edit the book and to eulogize his legacy.

Zelda Fitzgerald's work possessed a vitality and stamina because of his indefatigable faith in himself.

Zelda Fitzgerald worked on her novel while checking in and out of the hospital.

Zelda Fitzgerald did not get better, and she did not finish the novel.

Towards the end of her life, Zelda Fitzgerald resided in and out of sanatoriums.

Zelda Fitzgerald checked back into the hospital in September 1946, and then she returned to live with her mother Minnie in their Alabama home.

In November 1947, Zelda Fitzgerald returned for the last time to Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.

Zelda Fitzgerald's hair was stringy and she had lost all pride in herself.

Zelda Fitzgerald had been sedated and locked in a room on the fifth floor, possibly awaiting shock therapy.

Zelda Fitzgerald was identified by her dental records and, according to other reports, one of her slippers.

Zelda Fitzgerald succeeded, in this novel, in conveying her own heroic desperation to succeed at something of her own, and she managed to distinguish herself as a writer with, as Edmund Wilson once said of her husband, a 'gift for turning language into something iridescent and surprising.

In particular, partisan scholars of Zelda frequently depict Scott Fitzgerald as a domineering husband who drove his wife insane.

Zelda Fitzgerald particularly objected to revisionist depictions of her mother as "the classic 'put down' wife, whose efforts to express her artistic nature were thwarted by a typically male chauvinist husband".

In 1989, the F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald museum opened in Montgomery, Alabama.