F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University, which he left in 1917 to join the army. He is said to have epitomized the Jazz Age, which he himself defined as grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre; their traumatic marriage and her subsequent breakdowns became the leading influence on his writing. Among his publications were five novels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and The Last Tycoon; six volumes of short stories; and The Crack-Up, a selection of autobiographical pieces.

Min Jin Lee (introduction) is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Pachinko, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2017, and of the nationally bestselling novel Free Food for Millionaires. A writer in residence at Amherst College and the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, she lives in New York.

Philip McGowan (editor, notes) is an executive board member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, the president of the European Association for American Studies, a senior lecturer at Queen's University Belfast, and the editor of the Oxford University Press centenary edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.