The Chicago socialite Fitzgerald met at sixteen, whose world of inherited money became the model for Daisy Buchanan and the rich girls of his fiction.
Ginevra King was born in 1898 into a wealthy Chicago family and grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois. In January 1915, home from school, she met F. Scott Fitzgerald, then a Princeton undergraduate. The romance ran for roughly two years, conducted largely by letter, and ended before he left for the army.
She married William Mitchell in 1918 and remained in the Chicago society she had been born into. Fitzgerald returned to her for the rest of his working life: elements of Ginevra King appear in Isabelle Borgé in This Side of Paradise, Judy Jones in “Winter Dreams,” and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. He told his daughter that Ginevra was the first girl he ever loved.
Corresponded with · 1915
Fitzgerald met Ginevra King in January 1915 and the romance, conducted largely by letter, ran for roughly two years. She is one of the sources of the unattainable rich girl who recurs through his fiction, Daisy Buchanan included.
Inspired · Book
Scholarship traces Daisy Buchanan in part to Ginevra King, the Chicago socialite Fitzgerald courted from 1915. The debt is an interpretive one drawn from his letters and ledger rather than a statement Fitzgerald made about the character.
— Cambridge University Press — Biography, F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context
Corresponded with · 1915
Fitzgerald met Ginevra King in January 1915 and the romance, conducted largely by letter, ran for roughly two years. She is one of the sources of the unattainable rich girl who recurs through his fiction, Daisy Buchanan included.
Inspired
Scholarship traces Daisy Buchanan in part to Ginevra King, the Chicago socialite Fitzgerald courted from 1915. The debt is an interpretive one drawn from his letters and ledger rather than a statement Fitzgerald made about the character.
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