In a 1928 interview with Charles G. Shaw, F. Scott Fitzgerald mentioned “the wealthy middle-west” as one of his “chief early influences.” At the end of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald lists the surnames of three of those wealthy midwestern families––“Are you going to the Ordways? the Herseys? the Schultzes?” The Odways, the Herseys, and the Schulzes (Fitzgerald misspelled this name), and several other rich St. Paul, Minnesota, families were close friends of Fitzgerald and his immediate family. This illustrated talk will discuss wealthy St. Paul and its connections to Fitzgerald and his work.

David Page is the pre-eminent authority on Fitzgerald’s St. Paul, about which he has lectured throughout the United States and abroad. He is the author of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Minnesota: The Writer and His Friends at Home (2017), co-author of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Minnesota: Toward the Summit (1996), co-editor of The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2004), and he provided the Introduction and annotations for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Thoughtbook” (2013). In 2002, he appeared with Matthew J. Bruccoli and George Plimpton on C-Span’s American Writers Series program “Writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald” and he served as advisor to American Masters “F. Scott Fitzgerald: Winter Dreams” (2001) and to the BBC Omnibus “The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan.” In 2002, he co-chaired the International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference in St. Paul.