Tender Is the Night is the fourth and final novel completed by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in French Riviera during the twilight of the Jazz Age, the 1934 novel chronicles the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist, and his wife, Nicole, who is one of his patients. The story mirrors events in the lives of the author and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald as Dick starts his descent into alcoholism and Nicole struggles with mental illness.
The cover of the first edition
The French Riviera serves as the setting for the first third of the novel.
Gerald and Sara Murphy, upon whom characters in Tender Is the Night were based
Actress Lois Moran, with whom Fitzgerald had a relationship, inspired the character of Rosemary Hoyt
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Fitzgerald in 1929
Portrait of Scott and Zelda by Alfred Cheney Johnston, 1923
Passport photos of the Fitzgeralds, 1923
Fitzgerald's 1923 play, The Vegetable, was an unmitigated disaster and hurt his finances.