College of One
The Story of How F. Scott Fitzgerald Educated the Woman He Loved
The moving story of how F. Scott Fitzgerald—washed up, alcoholic and ill—dedicated himself to devising a heartfelt course in literature for the woman he loved.
In 1937, on the night of her engagement to the Marquess of Donegall, Sheilah Graham met F. Scott Fitzgerald at a party in Hollywood. Graham, a British-born journalist, broke off her engagement, and until Fitzgerald had a fatal heart attack in her apartment in 1940, the two writers lived the fervid, sometimes violent affair that is memorialized here with unprecedented intimacy.
When they met, Fitzgerald’s fame had waned. He battled crippling alcoholism while writing screenplays to support his daughter and institutionalized wife. Graham’s star, however, was rising, to the point where she became Hollywood’s highest-paid, best-read…