Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 25, 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of an aristocrat who believed in the code of the Southern gentleman, and a "straight 1850 potato-famine Irish" middle-class mother, as he would later put it. His father named him after a distant relative, the [[Francis Scott Key|author]] of the [[Star Spangled Banner]]. The mix of an unsuccessful father and an energetic mother would cause young F. Scott to grow up with mixed feelings about America, looking at the country as very promising, yet coming up short. | Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 25, 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of an aristocrat who believed in the code of the Southern gentleman, and a "straight 1850 potato-famine Irish" middle-class mother, as he would later put it. His father named him after a distant relative, the [[Francis Scott Key|author]] of the [[Star Spangled Banner]]. The mix of an unsuccessful father and an energetic mother would cause young F. Scott to grow up with mixed feelings about America, looking at the country as very promising, yet coming up short. |