This Goodly Land

Zelda Fitzgerald (June 24, 1900–March 10, 1948)

Other Names Used

• Zelda Sayre: birth name

Alabama Connections

• Montgomery, Montgomery County: birthplace, childhood residence, adult residence

Selected Works

• Fitzgerald, Zelda. Save Me the Waltz. New York: Scribner, 1932. Rpt. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967. Rpt. New York: New American Library, 1968.
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Zelda Fitzgerald. Bits of Paradise: 21 Uncollected Stories. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Scottie Fitzgerald Smith. New York: Scribner, 1973.
• Fitzgerald, Zelda. The Collected Writings. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Scribner, 1991.

Biographical Information

Zelda Fitzgerald was born and raised in Montgomery, Ala., the youngest daughter of a prominent family. She read widely growing up but had little interest in school and preferred to focus on her social life. Zelda graduated from Sidney Lanier High School in 1918. That summer, she began dating F. Scott Fitzgerald, a soldier stationed in the Montgomery area, whom she had met at a local dance. Although Scott wanted to marry her, Zelda’s parents doubted his ability to support her. After Scott published This Side of Paradise, Zelda joined him in New York, where they married in 1920. The couple entered New York literary society and became publicly identified with the 1920s “Jazz Age,” on the basis of Scott’s writing and their party-filled lifestyle. Scott’s fiction made extensive use of Zelda’s diary and letters, and he patterned many of his heroines on her. Zelda herself began writing articles and short stories on “flappers,” which were published under both their names or under Scott’s name alone.

Through the 1920s and into the early 1930s, the Fitzgeralds moved frequently between Europe and the United States. Zelda continued her writing and took up painting and ballet, hoping to become a professional dancer. In 1930, however, Zelda entered a Swiss mental health clinic where she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Although she spent most of the rest of her life in mental health facilities, she continued to write. In 1931, the Fitzgeralds returned to the United States and rented a house in Montgomery so that Zelda could be near her family. She had several breakdowns in early 1932 and entered a psychiatric hospital in Maryland. At the Maryland hospital, Zelda completed her novel, Save Me the Waltz, and collected her short stories and articles for publication in book form. From 1936 until her death in 1948, Zelda divided her time between Highland Hospital in Asheville, N.C., and her mother’s home in Montgomery. When Scott died in November of 1940, Zelda was too ill to attend his funeral. She died on March 10, 1948, trapped in a fire at Highland Hospital.

Interests and Themes

Zelda Fitzgerald’s writing, both fiction and nonfiction, is largely autobiographical. Frequent subjects include the frenetic lifestyle of the 1920s and the young women known as “flappers.”

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Books

• Bruccoli, Matthew J., Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, and Joan P. Kerr, eds. The Romantic Egoists: A Pictorial Autobiography from the Scrapbooks and Albums of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. New York: Scribner, 1974.
• Cline, Sally. Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise. New York: Arcade Pub., 2003.
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Zelda Fitzgerald. Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Ed. Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002.
• Fitzgerald, Zelda. Zelda: An Illustrated Life: The Private World of Zelda Fitzgerald. Ed. Eleanor Lanahan. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
• Hartnett, Koula Svokos. Zelda Fitzgerald and the Failure of the American Dream for Women. New York: P. Lang, 1990.
• Mayfield, Sara. Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Delacorte Press, 1971.
• Meade, Marion. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2004.
• Mellow, James R. Invented Lives: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
• Milford, Nancy. Zelda: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
• Taylor, Kendall. Sometimes Madness is Wisdom: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald: A Marriage. New York: Ballantine Books, 2001.
• Wagner-Martin, Linda. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman's Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Reference Articles

• Wagner-Martin, Linda. "Zelda Sayre, Belle". Southern Cultures 10.2. (2004): 19-49.

Reference Web Sites

• F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum. 2006. http://www.fitzgerald-museum.com.
• Curnutt, Kirk. "Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald". The Encyclopedia of Alabama. 2008. Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University. http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1120.

Location of Papers

• Princeton University

Photo courtesy of Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.

Last updated on May 30, 2008.