In what year did F. Scott Fitzgerald die?

F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, on December 21, at the age of 44. He suffered a fatal heart attack in his apartment in Los Angeles, where he was living while trying to establish himself as a screenwriter.

Fitzgerald had struggled with alcoholism and declining health for years, although he had achieved sobriety for more than a year before his death. The immediate medical cause was occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis, a severe condition affecting the heart’s arteries. His death came while he was working on The Last Tycoon, a novel he left unfinished.

The year 1940 can be confused with 1941 because The Last Tycoon was published posthumously in 1941 after Edmund Wilson edited Fitzgerald’s surviving manuscript. Fitzgerald’s literary reputation was also in an uncertain state when he died: The Great Gatsby had not yet received the major revival that would make it a staple of American literature. That renewed recognition developed during and after World War II.