Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist renowned for his spare, direct prose that emphasized action and implication over explicit exposition.[1][2] Born in Oak Park, Illinois, to a physician father and musician mother, he commenced his writing career at age seventeen as a reporter for the Kansas City Star, honing a journalistic style of economy and precision that permeated his fiction.[3][4] During World War I, Hemingway volunteered as an ambulance driver for the Italian army, sustaining shrapnel wounds that earned him the Silver Medal of Military Valor before returning to the United States and resuming journalism with the Toronto Star.[1] In the 1920s, he resided in Paris amid the expatriate literary community, forging connections with figures like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, and published breakthrough novels The Sun Also Rises (1926), evoking the Lost Generation's malaise, and A Farewell to Arms (1929), a semi-autobiographical war romance that solidified his fame.[1][5] Hemingway's oeuvre expanded with For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), drawn from his Spanish Civil War dispatches supporting the Republican side, and culminated in the novella The Old Man and the Sea (1952), which secured the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and underpinned his 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."[1][5] His peripatetic existence—encompassing big-game safaris in Africa, marlin fishing off Cuba, and frontline reporting in World War II—mirrored the rugged masculinity and existential themes in his work, though he grappled with chronic alcoholism, traumatic brain injuries from accidents, and hereditary depression.[1][2] In 1961, amid electroconvulsive treatments and escalating despair, Hemingway ended his life with a self-inflicted shotgun wound at his Ketchum, Idaho, home, following a pattern seen in his father and siblings.[6][2][7]Biography
Early Life and Education
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a physician, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a music teacher and trained opera singer.[8][9] He was the second of six children, with an older sister, Marcelline, born in 1898, followed by Ursula (1902), Madelaine (1904), Carol (1911), and Leicester (1915).[10] The family resided in a middle-class neighborhood in Oak Park, adhering to conservative Protestant values, with Clarence emphasizing outdoor pursuits like hunting and fishing, while Grace focused on music and arts.[11] The Hemingways spent summers at their cabin on Walloon Lake in northern Michigan, where Ernest accompanied his father on medical visits to Native American communities and learned skills in camping, fishing, and marksmanship, experiences that later influenced his writing.[8] These outings contrasted with domestic life in Oak Park, marked by familial tensions, including Grace's domineering approach to child-rearing and creative expression.[12] Hemingway attended local public schools in Oak Park before enrolling at Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1913, where he distinguished himself in English classes, contributing poems, stories, and articles to the school newspaper Trapeze and literary magazine Tabula.[13] He participated in boxing, football, swimming, and track, fostering a competitive spirit, and graduated on June 19, 1917.[14][15] Rather than pursuing college, Hemingway, seeking immediate experience beyond sheltered suburbia, secured a position as a reporter for the Kansas City Star in October 1917.[16]World War I Service and Injuries
Unable to enlist in the U.S. military due to poor eyesight, Ernest Hemingway volunteered with the American Red Cross and arrived in Milan, Italy, in early June 1918 at age 18.[17] He initially served as an ambulance driver before transitioning to managing a mobile canteen, distributing supplies such as chocolate and cigarettes to Italian troops along the front lines.[18] On the night of July 8, 1918, while delivering provisions to soldiers in a forward observation post near Fossalta di Piave along the Piave River delta, Hemingway was struck by an Austrian Minenwerfer mortar shell that exploded nearby.[19] The blast killed two Italian soldiers, wounded others, and embedded approximately 227 metal shards into Hemingway's flesh, primarily in his legs, right foot, knee, thighs, scalp, and hand; he was knocked unconscious and buried under debris.[18][19] Regaining consciousness amid the chaos, Hemingway lifted and carried a severely wounded Italian soldier, identified in some accounts as having taken the brunt of the shrapnel meant for him, to a nearby first-aid station despite his own injuries and exposure to further fire.[17][19] For this act of valor, the Italian government awarded him the Silver Medal of Military Valor (Medaglia d'argento al valor militare), making him one of the first Americans so honored, along with the War Cross and Croce al Merito di Guerra.[18][17] Hemingway was evacuated to the American Red Cross Hospital in Milan, where he underwent surgery under a leading specialist and spent several months recuperating, including physical therapy into December 1918.[18][19] He returned to the United States in January 1919, profoundly affected by his brief but intense exposure to combat.[17]Paris Expatriate Period
Ernest Hemingway arrived in Paris on December 22, 1921, with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, shortly after their marriage, having been encouraged by mentor Sherwood Anderson to join the American expatriate community there. Anderson provided letters of introduction to figures such as Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach, facilitating Hemingway's immersion in the modernist literary scene.[20] The couple initially stayed at the Hôtel Jacob et l'Angleterre before renting an apartment on the Left Bank near the Luxembourg Garden, embracing a frugal lifestyle amid the post-World War I cultural ferment.[20] Hemingway supported the family through freelance journalism, primarily as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, filing stories on European politics, skiing, and bullfighting while honing his fiction craft. He frequented cafés like Closerie des Lilas and Shakespeare and Company bookstore, associating with expatriates including Ezra Pound, who edited his early manuscripts, and James Joyce. In 1922, Stein hosted him regularly at her Rue de Fleurus salon, where he adopted her phrase "Lost Generation" to describe the disillusioned youth cohort, later applying it to his own work. His first major publications emerged from this period: the poetry and prose collection Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923) and the short story volume In Our Time (1924), the latter featuring Nick Adams vignettes reflecting his minimalist style development.[1] The birth of their son, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway (nicknamed "Bumby"), occurred on October 10, 1923, in Toronto during a temporary journalistic assignment, after which the family returned to Paris, employing a nanny and integrating the child into their expatriate routine. Hemingway's social circle expanded to include F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom he met in 1925 at the Dingo bar, and Harold Loeb, collaborating on boxing and writing amid the vibrant café culture. This milieu inspired his breakthrough novel The Sun Also Rises (1926), a semi-autobiographical depiction of expatriate ennui, bullfighting fiestas in Pamplona, and fractured relationships, drawing from real trips with friends like Loeb and Gerald Murphy.[21][22] In 1925, Hemingway met Pauline Pfeiffer, a fashion editor for the Paris edition of Vogue, at a Schrifts party; she soon became a frequent visitor to the Hemingway household, sparking an affair that strained his marriage to Hadley. Following a separation and divorce finalized in January 1927, Hemingway married Pfeiffer on May 10, 1927, in Paris. The couple resided at 6 Rue Mouffetard and later 113 Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré until 1928, during which time Hemingway continued writing and traveling. Their second son, Patrick, was born in Kansas City on June 28, 1928, prompting a shift toward the United States. Influenced by friend John Dos Passos, the Hemingways departed Paris in late 1928 for Key West, Florida, marking the end of Hemingway's primary expatriate phase.[23][24][25]Key West Settlement and 1920s-1930s Productivity
In April 1928, Ernest Hemingway arrived in Key West, Florida, while traveling from Paris to the United States, following a recommendation from friend John Dos Passos.[25] He and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, chose to settle there instead of continuing north, initially renting an apartment above a Ford dealership on Simonton Street for three weeks while awaiting a car gifted by Pauline's uncle Gus Pfeiffer.[25] The couple was drawn to the island's rustic fishing village atmosphere, which offered a contrast to Paris and opportunities for deep-sea angling.[26] In 1931, after two seasons in Key West, Gus Pfeiffer purchased the Spanish Colonial-style house at 907 Whitehead Street for the Hemingways, covering $8,000 in back taxes for the 1851-built property.[25] [27] Hemingway resided there until 1939, establishing a disciplined routine of writing each morning in a studio above the carriage house, followed by afternoons exploring the Gulf Stream for big-game fish such as marlin and tuna alongside local companions like Charles Thompson and Joe Russell.[25] His nickname "Papa" emerged among his circle, known as "The Mob," reflecting his paternal role in this adventurous lifestyle.[25] In 1937–1938, Pauline added a swimming pool to the property at a cost of $20,000, with Hemingway quipping it was dug from stacks of silver coins.[25] Hemingway's time in Key West marked a peak of productivity, yielding several major publications. He completed A Farewell to Arms, a semi-autobiographical novel based on his World War I experiences, in Key West in 1928; it appeared in 1929 and became a bestseller.[25] [28] Subsequent works included the bullfighting treatise Death in the Afternoon (1932), the short story collection Winner Take Nothing (1933), the African safari narrative Green Hills of Africa (1935), and To Have and Have Not (1937), a novel depicting rum-running and economic hardship in Depression-era Key West inspired by local figures and events.[29] [27] [30] Hemingway's fishing pursuits enhanced his writing and local renown. In 1935, he dominated every tournament in the Key West–Havana–Bimini circuit.[31] The following year, 1938, he set an international record by landing seven marlin in one day aboard his boat Pilar.[31] These experiences informed his portrayals of maritime life and human endurance in his fiction.[25]Spanish Civil War Involvement
Ernest Hemingway first traveled to Spain in late 1936 as a war correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), shortly after the Spanish Civil War erupted on July 17, 1936, pitting the Republican government against Nationalist forces under General Francisco Franco.[32] His reporting from the Republican side emphasized the conflict's human cost and framed it as resistance against fascist aggression, though he displayed clear partiality by downplaying Republican internal divisions and atrocities, such as the 1936 Paracuellos massacres orchestrated by leftist militias.[33] [34] In April 1937, while based in Madrid, he filed dispatches detailing Nationalist aerial bombings but omitted concurrent Republican shelling of civilian areas, aligning his narratives with Loyalist propaganda efforts amid the city's siege.[33] Hemingway's engagement deepened in 1937 with a prolonged stay from mid-June to mid-September, totaling nearly four months, during which he produced around 30 articles for U.S. newspapers that humanized Republican fighters and civilians while critiquing non-intervention by Western democracies.[35] [36] He collaborated on the pro-Republican documentary Spanish Earth, directed by Joris Ivens, contributing to the script and providing narration recorded with Orson Welles' assistance; the film, shot over 40 days in and around Madrid, aimed to rally international support by depicting irrigation projects and frontline resilience as symbols of Republican determination.[37] [38] This work explicitly served propagandistic purposes, seeking to influence U.S. policy against Franco's rebels, who received aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.[39] Beyond journalism, Hemingway provided financial aid to the Republican cause, donating personal funds to procure ambulances and covering travel costs for volunteer drivers affiliated with the International Brigades.[40] In 1938, he returned to report from the Ebro River front during the Battle of the Ebro (July-November 1938), the Republicans' final major offensive, where he observed the devastating toll on Loyalist forces amid Soviet-supplied equipment and internal communist purges.[41] His dispatches and activities reflected a commitment to the Republican side, influenced by his aversion to fascism but overlooking the factional violence and authoritarian tendencies within the Loyalist coalition, including Stalinist executions of anarchists and moderates.[42] These experiences directly shaped his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, which romanticizes anti-Nationalist guerrillas while critiquing war's futility.[36]