Zelda by Nancy Milford

Zelda by Nancy Milford

"Profound, overwhelmingly moving . . . a richly
complex love story." -- New York Times

Acclaimed
biographer Nancy Milford brings to life the tormented, elusive personality of
Zelda Sayre and clarifies as never before Zelda's relationship with her husband
F. Scott Fitzgerald--tracing the inner disintegration of a gifted, despairing
woman, torn by the clash between her husband's career and her own talent.

Zelda
Sayre's stormy life spanned from notoriety as a spirited Southern beauty to
success as a gifted novelist and international celebrity at the side of her
husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda and Fitzgerald were one of the most visible
couples of the Jazz Age, inhabiting and creating around them a world of
excitement, romance, art, and promise. Yet their tumultuous relationship
precipitated a descent into depression and mental instability for Zelda,
leaving her to spend the final twenty years of her life in hospital care, until
a fire at a sanitarium claimed her life.

Incorporating years of exhaustive research and interviews, Milford illuminates
Zelda's nuanced and elusive personality, giving character to both her artistic
vibrancy and to her catastrophic collapse.

Zelda by Nacy Milford spent twenty-nine weeks in hardcover on the New York Times bestseller list, was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, and was translated into twelve languages. Nancy Milford was a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey in 1999 and a Brown University Annenberg Fellow. She has taught at the University of Michigan, Vassar College, and Princeton University's American Studies Department this fall. She is a Literary Lion at the New York Public Library and a creator of the Writers Room. She has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a New Yorker.