Zelda: A Biography (Paperback or Softback)

“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.

Nancy Milford holds both an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University where Zelda was her dissertation. She has held a Guggenheim Fellowship in Biography, and has served on the boards of the Authors Guild, the Society of American Historians, and the Writers Room, of which she is a founder. Her most recent book is Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She lives in Manhattan.