Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald), 1896–1940, American novelist and short-story writer, b. St. Paul, Minn. He is ranked among the great American writers of the 20th cent. Fitzgerald is widely considered the literary spokesman of the "jazz age"—the decade of the 1920s. Part of the interest of his work derives from the fact that the mad, gin-drinking, morally and spiritually bankrupt men and women he wrote about led lives that closely resembled his own.