Q 01/05

In which city was F. Scott Fitzgerald born in 1896?

A) Buffalo, New York

B) Saint Paul, Minnesota

C) Montgomery, Alabama

D) Chicago, Illinois

Answer · why

B) Saint Paul, Minnesota

His childhood home on Summit Terrace became a National Historic Landmark in 1971, though he thought it an architectural monstrosity.

Q 02/05

Fitzgerald was named after which distant cousin?

A) Francis Scott Key, who wrote 'The Star-Spangled Banner'

B) Scott Joplin, the ragtime composer

C) Francis Scott, a Maryland senator

D) Winfield Scott, the Civil War general

Answer · why

A) Francis Scott Key, who wrote 'The Star-Spangled Banner'

Another cousin, Mary Surratt, was hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Lincoln, a connection he preferred not to mention.

Q 03/05

Which company employed Fitzgerald's father as a salesman in Buffalo before firing him in 1908?

A) Kellogg's

B) Sears, Roebuck

C) Coca-Cola

D) Procter & Gamble

Answer · why

D) Procter & Gamble

His father's wicker-furniture business had already failed; his mother's inheritance kept the family middle-class.

Q 04/05

Which university did Fitzgerald attend, and drop out of in 1917?

A) Georgetown

B) Dartmouth

C) Columbia

D) Princeton

Answer · why

D) Princeton

He was one of the few Catholics in the student body and wrote for the Triangle Club, the Tiger and the Nassau Lit.

Q 05/05

Which future literary critic befriended Fitzgerald at university and edited his unfinished last novel?

A) Lionel Trilling

B) Malcolm Cowley

C) Edmund Wilson

D) H. L. Mencken

Answer · why

C) Edmund Wilson

Wilson published The Last Tycoon within a year of Fitzgerald's death and bundled it with Gatsby, restarting critical interest.