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  • Author
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· American · 1900–1948

Zelda Fitzgerald

Novelist, painter, and the Jazz Age's other Fitzgerald — the subject of A Moveable Feast's most disputed portrait.

In images

Details

Lived
1900–1948
Born
24 July 1900
Birthplace
Montgomery, Alabama
Died
10 March 1948 · aged 47
Place of death
Asheville, North Carolina
Nationality
American
Married
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1920–1940
Children
Frances ('Scottie')
Roles
AuthorPainter
Also known as
Zelda Sayre
In fiction
Nicole Diver in Tender Is the NightAlabama Beggs in Save Me the Waltz

About Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda Sayre was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1900, the youngest child of a state supreme court justice and the boldest girl in a town that kept score. She met Lieutenant F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country-club dance in 1918 while he was posted at Camp Sheridan, held him off until the writing paid, and married him at St. Patrick's Cathedral in April 1920 — the same week This Side of Paradise made him famous. Together they became the Jazz Age's public face, and she its first definition: the original of the flapper, the voice half the era's heroines borrowed.

How much they borrowed was her own early joke. Reviewing The Beautiful and Damned in 1922, she noted drily that she recognized portions of her diaries and letters in it — and that plagiarism seemed to begin at home. Through the twenties she published essays and stories of her own (some under joint byline for the better fee), crossed to France with the family in 1924, and returned to ballet in America in 1927 — then, in the summer of 1928 in Paris, began training under Lubov Egorova with a punishing, late-starting seriousness: the discipline of a woman looking for work that was hers alone.

The cost came due in 1930: the first breakdown, at the Prangins clinic on Lake Geneva. At the Phipps Clinic in 1932 she wrote Save Me the Waltz in six weeks — her only completed novel, and the marriage's story told from her side of the table; Scott raged at the overlap with his own book in progress, then helped see hers through the press. Her paintings were exhibited in New York in 1934, the year Tender Is the Night published the marriage from his side. From 1936 she was in and out of Highland Hospital in Asheville, painting and working at a second novel, Caesar's Things, that never finished. Scott died in 1940; she died in a fire at Highland on 10 March 1948.

The reassessment began with Nancy Milford's Zelda in 1970 and has not stopped: the diaries, the stories, the novel, and the paintings are now read as the work of an artist in her own right — and A Moveable Feast's hostile portrait of her is read, at minimum, with a second witness in the room. This page will grow with her books.

Life events

  1. 1900

    Born 24 July in Montgomery, Alabama — the judge's youngest daughter, and the town's boldest.

  2. 1918

    Meets Lieutenant Fitzgerald at a country-club dance while he is posted at Camp Sheridan.

  3. 1920

    Marries Scott at St. Patrick's Cathedral the week This Side of Paradise makes him famous — and the Jazz Age gets its public face.

  4. 1921

    Their daughter Scottie born in October.

    Scott and Zelda, September 1921 — married eighteen months, expecting Scottie, and already the country's most photographed literary couple. (Kenneth Melvin Wright)

  5. 1922

    Great Neck. She publishes her own pieces — including a review of Scott's novel drily noting passages she recognized from her diaries.

    Scott and Zelda at the beach, 1922 — two summers before the Riviera. (Photographer unknown)

  6. 1923

    The celebrity-portrait years — the flappers' first lady.

    Scott and Zelda photographed by Alfred Cheney Johnston, published in Hearst's International, May 1923 — the couple at their zenith, the year before France. (Alfred Cheney Johnston, Hearst's International)

  7. 1924

    The family sails for France — the Riviera summer, and a crisis the marriage never fully filed away.

    Pages from the family passport, 1924 — Scott, Zelda, and two-year-old Scottie, bound for France and the writing of The Great Gatsby. (United States Government Printing Office)

  8. 1928

    From the flat at 58 rue de Vaugirard, begins training under Lubov Egorova with punishing, late-starting seriousness.

  9. 1929

    The expatriate paperwork — Paris and the Riviera on renewable identity cards.

    Scott's and Zelda's French identity cards, 1929 — the couple's residency in France, in the Republic's own paperwork. (Photographer unknown)

  10. 1930

    The first breakdown, at the Prangins clinic on Lake Geneva.

  11. 1932

    Save Me the Waltz — written in six weeks at the Phipps Clinic, her only completed novel.

  12. 1934

    Her paintings exhibited in New York; Tender Is the Night publishes the marriage from Scott's side.

  13. 1936

    Enters Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina — painting and writing at Caesar's Things, in and out of care for the rest of her life.

  14. 1940

    Scott dies in December. She is forty, and outlives him by eight years.

  15. 1948

    Dies in a fire at Highland Hospital on 10 March.

  16. 1970

    Nancy Milford's Zelda opens the great reassessment — she is read now as an artist in her own right, not a footnote to someone else's.

Featured in these books

Cover of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast

by Ernest Hemingway

How Zelda appears in its pages: Scott's wife, present at the parties and at the center of 'Hawks Do Not Share' — the memoir's most disputed portrait.

The full portrait — Zelda Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast

Scott's wife, present at the parties and at the center of 'Hawks Do Not Share' — the memoir's most disputed portrait.

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Zelda enters the book on Scott's arm and stays at the edge of his chapters, watching. The memoir presents her with hawk's eyes and a dangerous smile, and its thesis is blunt: she is jealous of Scott's work, and the parties, the drinking, and the chaos that keep him from writing are — in Hemingway's telling — partly her design. 'Hawks Do Not Share' is her chapter, set in the Fitzgeralds' gloomy flat on the rue de Tilsitt.

What Zelda wants, the book never really asks — it is Scott's corner the narrator is in, and the portrait makes no secret of it. Even so, her intelligence keeps breaking through the frame: the wit is quick, the judgments land, and the reader can usually see a second version of events running under the one being narrated.

How the book draws them

  • The lookHawk's eyes and a thin mouth, softened by deep-South manners and a drawl — a physical description that doubles as the book's warning.
  • The tellShe grows happiest, the narrator notices, exactly when Scott is drinking — a smile the book chooses to read as strategy.
  • The deliveryHer hardest remarks arrive softly, as confidences — which is what makes them land.
  • The Riviera glossAt Juan-les-Pins the book concedes the glamour in full: tanned a lovely gold, her hair a beautiful dark gold, and entirely friendly — the portrait's warning issued precisely because the surface was this good.
  • The settingThe chapter meets her at the Fitzgeralds' flat on the rue de Tilsitt, which the book finds cheerless — rented grandeur near the Étoile with nothing of their Paris in it.
  • The watchfulnessMore observer than participant in Scott's chapters: the book keeps catching her watching — the table, the drinks, Scott — and keeps wondering what the watching is for.

At a glance

In the book
'Zelda' — Scott's wife, the Jazz Age's other famous Fitzgerald
Where she appears
'Hawks Do Not Share' and the edges of Scott's chapters
The real person
Zelda Fitzgerald (née Sayre) · 1900–1948 · Montgomery, Alabama
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

The chapter's ending shows its hand: Hemingway writes that the moment he understood everything was Zelda leaning close to tell him her secret — that Al Jolson is greater than Jesus. The book treats it as the first visible crack of the illness to come; Zelda suffered her first breakdown in 1930 and spent much of her remaining life in clinics, diagnosed with schizophrenia. She died in 1948, in a fire at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.

The counter-case is now a literature of its own. Zelda was a writer and painter in her own right — her novel Save Me the Waltz appeared in 1932 — and biographers since Nancy Milford's Zelda (1970) have argued that the memoir's portrait blames her for a dynamic two people built. Hemingway never pretended to neutrality about her, and readers should take the chapter as testimony from one side of a marriage he watched from outside.

More people from A Moveable Feast

Characters Zelda inspired

Cover of This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This Side of Paradise

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rosalind Connage is invented, drawn from Zelda: The nineteen-year-old New York debutante at the novel's center: dazzling, honest about wanting money, in love with Amory, and unwilling to be poor.

Read the character guide
Cover of Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tender Is the Night

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Nicole Diver is invented, drawn from Zelda: The heiress at the center of the marriage-as-case — a fictional composite, not Zelda under another name, though Nicole's illness, her clinics, and the doctor-husband bound to her were transposed from the Fitzgeralds' own marriage.

Read the character guide

People they knew

Documented connections — every one carries its source.

Illustrated portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

  • Author

Married to · 1920

The marriage at the center of both legends — lived through New York, the Riviera, and Paris, chronicled from the inside in their fiction and from a barstool's distance in A Moveable Feast.

— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964), the Fitzgerald chapters

Illustrated portrait of Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

  • Author
  • Journalist

Met · 1925

Met through Scott in the spring of 1925, and the wariness was mutual from the first dinner — she judged him a poseur, he judged her the enemy of Scott's work. A Moveable Feast files its side of the verdict under 'Hawks Do Not Share.'

— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964), 'Hawks Do Not Share'; Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (1969)

Movements

The artistic and literary currents this life ran through.

Pen-and-ink illustration of four young writers revising manuscripts around a typewriter at a Paris café in the 1920s

Literary generation · c. 1921–1929

The Lost Generation

Half of the generation's defining couple — its most photographed muse, and a writer of it herself; the era's most famous memoir gives her its bitterest chapters.

— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964), the Fitzgerald chapters

Zelda Fitzgerald’s Places

The cataloged places connected to Zelda Fitzgerald — through the books, and through the documented record.

Places you can enter today appear first, followed by addresses to see from outside and sites that have vanished.

Questions about Zelda Fitzgerald

Who was Zelda Fitzgerald?

An American writer and painter (1900–1948), F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife and the Jazz Age's other Fitzgerald — its most photographed muse, and increasingly read as an artist in her own right.

What did Zelda Fitzgerald write?

Essays and stories through the 1920s, some published under a joint byline for the better fee, and one completed novel, Save Me the Waltz (1932) — the marriage's story told from her side of the table.

Was Zelda Fitzgerald a dancer and painter too?

Yes. She trained seriously in ballet in Paris from the summer of 1928, under Lubov Egorova, and her paintings were exhibited in New York in 1934.

What happened to Zelda Fitzgerald?

She suffered her first breakdown in 1930 and was in and out of care for the rest of her life. From 1936 she was at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, where she died in a fire on 10 March 1948.

Why is Zelda Fitzgerald being reassessed?

Since Nancy Milford's 1970 biography Zelda, her diaries, stories, novel, and paintings are read as the work of an artist in her own right — and A Moveable Feast's hostile portrait of her is now read with a second witness in the room.

Sourced claims

Every connection the graph holds for Zelda, with the evidence behind it.

Married to · 1920

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The marriage at the center of both legends — lived through New York, the Riviera, and Paris, chronicled from the inside in their fiction and from a barstool's distance in A Moveable Feast.

— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964), the Fitzgerald chapters

Associated with · 1920–1930

The Lost Generation

Half of the generation's defining couple — its most photographed muse, and a writer of it herself; the era's most famous memoir gives her its bitterest chapters.

— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964), the Fitzgerald chapters

Lived at · 1925–1926

14 Rue de Tilsitt

Zelda's first settled Paris address — the Right Bank flat of the Gatsby year, kept through the winter until the family left for Salies-de-Béarn in January 1926.

— A Fitzgerald Chronology — Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Lived at · 1928

58 Rue de Vaugirard

The address of Zelda's ballet summer — from this flat facing the Luxembourg Gardens she began daily training under Lubov Egorova in mid-1928, paying for the lessons with her own magazine writing.

— A Fitzgerald Chronology — Matthew J. and Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald; John Baxter, John Baxter — A Plaque for Scott and Zelda

Met · 1925

Ernest Hemingway

Met through Scott in the spring of 1925, and the wariness was mutual from the first dinner — she judged him a poseur, he judged her the enemy of Scott's work. A Moveable Feast files its side of the verdict under 'Hawks Do Not Share.'

— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964), 'Hawks Do Not Share'; Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (1969)

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