A History of Literary Excellence
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival was founded in 1996 to commemorate the 100th birthday of celebrated American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, born on September 24, 1896.
His paternal ancestors were from Montgomery County, Maryland. F. Scott is buried, along with his wife Zelda and his daughter Scottie (Frances Scott), in the cemetery of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Rockville, Maryland, located on Veirs Mill Road near the Town Square.
The original name of our organization and main event was the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference. In 2013, we officially changed the name to the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Life, Family, Death, and Legacy
F. Scott Fitzgerald is associated with the glittering, romantic, and dissipated excesses of the Jazz Age—a term he coined—and venues such as Princeton’s rarefied ivy halls, as well as the glamour of New York, Paris, the French Riviera, and Hollywood. But Fitzgerald’s Maryland roots were so deeply embedded that when he died suddenly in Hollywood, there was little question that Rockville would be his final resting place.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His mother, Mollie McQuillan, was the daughter of a prosperous wholesale grocer in St. Paul. While his mother’s family had the money, he carried his genteel Maryland pedigree in his name. His Maryland connections were his father’s. Edward Fitzgerald was from a well-established Montgomery County family. Young Fitzgerald regularly visited his father’s relatives at Locust Grove, their farm in Montgomery County, returning home to Minnesota fascinated by his family and Civil War stories.
The author’s lifelong connection to Rockville was maintained through correspondence, family ties and visits, and, ultimately, his final resting place. As a 6-year-old, he was a “ribbon holder” at his cousin Cecilia Delihant’s wedding at Randolph Station, south of Rockville, on April 24, 1903.
Even as a youngster, Fitzgerald led a nomadic life. His father’s unfulfilled search for success in business took the family to Buffalo and Syracuse. Eventually they returned to live with his mother’s family in St. Paul. Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton, enlisted in the army, and, while stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, met Zelda Sayre. The two were married in New York City in 1920, following the publication of his first novel. After their marriage, they lived in Europe and numerous locations in the United States.
From 1932 to 1937, the Fitzgeralds lived in Baltimore while Zelda was undergoing treatment for mental illness.
Fitzgerald completed Tender Is the Night (1934) in Baltimore. People, places, and experiences in Rockville found their way into that novel and his other writings. As an adult, Fitzgerald may have visited Rockville more than research has revealed. We do know that he returned from Paris in 1931 to attend his father’s funeral at Saint Mary’s Church. A passage in Tender Is the Night describes his feeling: “It was very friendly leaving him there with all his relations around him… Dick had no more ties here now and did not believe he would come back… ‘Good-bye my father—good-bye, all my fathers.’”
Fitzgerald did come back. He died at age 44 on December 21, 1940, in Hollywood, California, and was buried in Rockville Cemetery, Maryland.
When Zelda died in 1948, she was buried with him beneath a common headstone. In 1975, they were reinterred at Saint Mary’s Church cemetery on Veirs Mill Road. In 1986, their daughter Scottie was buried in the family plot. Today, 15 members of the family—Fitzgeralds, Delihants, Scotts, and Robertsons—are interred at historic Saint Mary’s Church.
When Fitzgerald died, he believed himself a failure. He had written five novels—This Side of Paradise (1920); The Beautiful and Damned (1922); The Great Gatsby (1925); Tender Is the Night (1934); and The Last Tycoon (1941, left incomplete at his death). While he worked as a contract screenwriter in Hollywood, he had only one credited screenplay, Three Comrades. Fitzgerald churned out short stories to pay the bills—first to support an expensive lifestyle and later to provide for Zelda’s medical treatments and Scottie’s education. Of more than 150 short stories, 46 were published in four collections. He was an early success—his writing captured an era. At the time of his death, there was little market for his writing, perhaps because the glamour and wealth of his characters seemed less relevant during the Great Depression.
Following World War II, Fitzgerald’s work and exquisite craftsmanship gradually received the appreciation and acclaim that it has today.
The Great Gatsby, a tale that chronicles the corruption of the American Dream, not only is a staple of American literature classes but also, in two recent surveys, has been rated one of the best twentieth-century English-language novels. Each year on his birthday, visitors find their way to Fitzgerald’s gravesite at Saint Mary’s Church cemetery. They leave flowers, packs of cigarettes, martini glasses, and gin bottles in silent homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald, the romantic legend and chronicler of the Jazz Age.
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference was founded in 1996 in Rockville, Montgomery County, Maryland, to honor the contributions of Fitzgerald, and contemporary writers, to the American literary tradition. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference, now known as the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival, is the premier literary festival dedicated to writers and artists who embody the spirit and craft of F. Scott Fitzgerald, attracting participants from around the globe.
