Zelda Fitzgerald

American wife of novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Slender, with bobbed hair and short dresses, she was the epitome of the Jazz Age. The daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Justice, Fitzgerald was the last of eight children. She was the golden child who later became the Belle of Montgomery as well as the personification of the Jazz Age Flapper. At a country club dance on July 1918, she met and fell in love with novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald and became engaged. In 1919, she broke off the engagement for fear of living in poverty, however they reconciled and married on 4/03/1920. They began a ten-year period of extravagant living, excess socializing and drinking. She was adventurous, spontaneous and fond of off-beat antics, the penultimate party-girl. While married, she had three abortions and on 10/26/1921, their only child, daughter Frances was born, who later married and had four kids; she died of cancer in 1986. Fitzgerald studied ballet as she did everything, with such intensity that it culminated in her first nervous breakdown, 4/21/1930. At this time she was diagnosed as a schizophrenic. Slipping more and more into dementia from 1925, she began treatment in sanitariums. Voluntarily, she entered a Switzerland hospital on 4/23/1930. After a week, she ran away but was returned against her will on 5/22/1930. After running back home again after a week, she returned voluntarily on 6/5/1930. Between 1936 and 1939 she received treatment in North Carolina. During her lucid periods, she continued to study ballet, wrote and painted. "Save Me the Waltz" was her first and only novel that was written in 1931 or 1932 and was reprinted in 1953. Her writing skills were keen enough that at times she filled in for F. Scott when he was off-the-wagon and too drunk to finish an assignment. She died on 3/10/1948 along with eight other women in a hospital fire in Asheville, NC. Upon her death, her husband's grave was dug up and made deeper, so that she could be interred with him. Link to Wikipedia biography