MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s love letters passed through Baltimore’s postal system while Zelda was institutionalized at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins University in the Winter/Spring of 1932 and at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital from May 1934 until April 1936, providing tactile tools in which to view the epistolary rooms they kept sealed from their readers, relatives, and friends during this time. The Fitzgeralds’ letters were the domiciles that only they inhabited, built outside of their actual separated residential walls. Their letters became homes for words and passion that were constructed with brilliant descriptions, observations, emotions, and postmarks, not with traditional brick and mortar. Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald: Writing through Walls aims to provide a new window into viewing Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald during their Baltimore years, not just in terms of understanding their relationship, but also within the framework of the mental illness and alcohol addiction disabilities which contributed to their physical separation. The Fitzgeralds’ letters show the unfiltered, gifted, creative, and ambitious people behind their prose and infamous personas, as well as the culture of Mid-Atlantic America in the 1930’s and the necessary new literary rooms created by their written exchanges.