Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist,
short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle and outspoken, blunt public image. Some of his seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works have become classics of
American literature
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the British colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also ...
, and he was awarded the
1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Hemingway was raised in
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, adjacent to Chicago. It is the List of municipalities in Illinois, 26th-most populous municipality in Illinois, with a population of 54,318 as of the 2020 census. Oak Park was first se ...
, a suburb of
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
. After high school, he spent six months as a reporter for ''
The Kansas City Star
''The Kansas City Star'' is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes.
''The Star'' is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and a ...
'' before enlisting in the
Red Cross
The organized International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 16million volunteering, volunteers, members, and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ...
. He served as an ambulance driver on the
Italian Front in
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
and was seriously wounded by shrapnel in 1918. In 1921, Hemingway moved to Paris, where he worked as a
foreign correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is usually a journalist or commentator for a magazine, or an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, locati ...
for the ''
Toronto Star
The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part of Torstar's Daily News Brands (Torstar), Daily News Brands division.
...
'' and was influenced by the
modernist
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
writers and artists of the "
Lost Generation
The Lost Generation was the Demography, demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort that reached early adulthood during World War I, and preceded the Greatest Generation. The social generation is generally defined as people born from 1883 to 1900, ...
" expatriate community. His debut novel, ''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, following his experimental novel-in-fragments '' In Our Time (short story collection)'' (1925). It portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Par ...
'', was published in 1926. In 1928, Hemingway returned to the U.S., where he settled in
Key West, Florida
Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida, at the southern end of the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Sigsbee Park, Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Islan ...
. His experiences during the war supplied material for his 1929 novel ''
A Farewell to Arms
''A Farewell to Arms'' is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, set during the Italian campaign of World War I. First published in 1929, it is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant () in the a ...
''.
In 1937, Hemingway went to Spain to cover the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
, which formed the basis for his 1940 novel ''
For Whom the Bell Tolls
''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned ...
'', written in
Havana, Cuba
Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.[World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...](_bl ...<br></span></div>. During <div class=)
, Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the
Normandy landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and ...
and the
liberation of Paris
The liberation of Paris () was a battle that took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25 August 1944. Paris had been occupied by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Armisti ...
. In 1952, his novel ''
The Old Man and the Sea
''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiag ...
'' was published to considerable acclaim, and won the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during ...
. On a 1954 trip to Africa, Hemingway was seriously injured in two successive plane crashes, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. He committed suicide at his
house in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1961.
Early life
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, adjacent to Chicago. It is the List of municipalities in Illinois, 26th-most populous municipality in Illinois, with a population of 54,318 as of the 2020 census. Oak Park was first se ...
, an affluent suburb just west of
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
. to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a physician, and
Grace Hall Hemingway, a musician. His parents were well-educated and well-respected in Oak Park,
[Reynolds (2000), 17–18] a conservative community about which resident
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed List of Frank Lloyd Wright works, more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key ...
said, "So many churches for so many good people to go to." When Clarence and Grace Hemingway married in 1896, they
lived with Grace's father, Ernest Miller Hall, after whom they named their first son, the second of their six children.
His sister Marcelline preceded him in 1898, and his younger siblings were Ursula in 1902, Madelaine in 1904, Carol in 1911, and
Leicester
Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area, and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest city in the East Midlands with a popula ...
in 1915.
Grace followed the Victorian convention of not differentiating children's clothing by gender. With only a year separating them, Ernest and Marcelline resembled one another strongly. Grace wanted them to appear as twins, so in Ernest's first three years she kept his hair long and dressed both children in similarly frilly feminine clothing.

Grace Hemingway was a well-known local musician,
[Reynolds (2000), 19] and taught her reluctant son to play the cello. Later he said music lessons contributed to his writing style, as evidenced in the "
contrapuntal
In music theory, counterpoint is the relationship of two or more simultaneous Part (music), musical lines (also called voices) that are harmonically dependent on each other, yet independent in rhythm and Pitch contour, melodic contour. The term ...
structure" of ''
For Whom the Bell Tolls
''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned ...
''. As an adult Hemingway professed to hate his mother, although they shared similar enthusiastic energies.
His father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway, taught him
woodcraft
Woodcraft or woodlore is skill and experience in living and thriving in the woods, either on a short- or long-term basis. It includes skills as hunting, fishing, and camping. Traditionally, woodcraft was associated with subsistence lifestyles an ...
during the family's summer sojourns at
Windemere on
Walloon Lake
Walloon Lake is a glacier-formed lake located in Charlevoix and Emmet counties, just southwestward from the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. It is now home to many vacation homes and cottages. Though the end of the west arm o ...
, near
Petoskey, Michigan
Petoskey ( ) is the largest city in and the county seat of Emmet County, Michigan, and is the largest settlement within the county. Petoskey has a population of 5,877 at the 2020 census, up from 5,670 at the 2010 census.
Petoskey is part of N ...
, where Ernest learned to hunt, fish and camp in the woods and lakes of
Northern Michigan
Northern Michigan (also known as Northern Lower Michigan and colloquially within Michigan as "Up North") is a region of the U.S. state of Michigan. The region, which is distinct from the more northerly Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Upper Peninsul ...
. These early experiences instilled in him a life-long passion for outdoor adventure and living in remote or isolated areas.
[Beegel (2000), 63–71]
Hemingway went to
Oak Park and River Forest High School
Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF) is a public four-year high school located in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. It is the only school in Oak Park and River Forest District 200. Founded in 1871, the current school building ope ...
in Oak Park between 1913 and 1917, where he competed in boxing, track and field, water polo, and football. He performed in the school orchestra for two years with his sister Marcelline, and received good grades in English.
During his last two years at high school he edited the school's newspaper and yearbook (the ''Trapeze'' and ''Tabula''); he imitated the language of popular sportswriters and contributed under the pen name Ring Lardner Jr.—a nod to
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner (March 6, 1885 – September 25, 1933) was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical writings on sports, marriage, and the theatre. His contemporaries—Ernest Hemingway, Virginia W ...
of the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...
'' whose byline was "Line O'Type".
A remembrance garden to honor Hemingway was erected in front of the high school in 1996.
After leaving high school, he went to work for ''
The Kansas City Star
''The Kansas City Star'' is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes.
''The Star'' is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and a ...
'' as a cub reporter.
[Meyers (1985), 19–23] Although he stayed there only for six months, the ''Star''s
style guide
A style guide is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. A book-length style guide is often called a style manual or a manual of style. A short style guide, typically ranging from several to several dozen page ...
, which stated "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative", became a foundation for his prose.
World War I

Hemingway wanted to go to war and tried to enlist in the
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...
but was not accepted because he had poor eyesight. Instead he volunteered to a
Red Cross
The organized International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 16million volunteering, volunteers, members, and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ...
recruitment effort in December 1917 and signed on to be an ambulance driver with the
American Red Cross Motor Corps in Italy. In May 1918, he sailed from New York, and arrived in Paris as the city was under bombardment from German artillery.
[Meyers (1985), 27–31] That June he arrived at the
Italian Front, holding the ranks of
second lieutenant (
A.R.C.) and ''sottotenente'' (
Italian Army
The Italian Army ( []) is the Army, land force branch of the Italian Armed Forces. The army's history dates back to the Italian unification in the 1850s and 1860s. The army fought in colonial engagements in China and Italo-Turkish War, Libya. It ...
) simultaneously. On his first day in
Milan
Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
, he was sent to the scene of a
munitions factory explosion to join rescuers retrieving the shredded remains of female workers. He described the incident in his 1932 non-fiction book ''
Death in the Afternoon
''Death in the Afternoon'' is a non-fiction book written by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understat ...
'': "I remember that after we searched quite thoroughly for the complete dead we collected fragments."
[Mellow (1992), 57–60] A few days later, he was stationed at
Fossalta di Piave
Fossalta di Piave is a town in the Metropolitan City of Venice, Veneto, Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsul ...
.
On July 8, right after bringing chocolate and cigarettes from the canteen to the men at the front line, the group came under mortar fire. Hemingway was seriously wounded.
Despite his wounds, he assisted Italian soldiers to safety, for which he was decorated with the
Italian War Merit Cross (''Croce al Merito di Guerra'') and with the Italian
Silver Medal of Military Valor
The Silver Medal of Military Valor () is an Italian medal for gallantry.
Italian medals for valor were first instituted by Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia on 21 May 1793, with a gold medal, and, below it, a silver medal. These were intended for j ...
(''Medaglia d'argento al valor militare'').
[On awarding the medal, the Italians wrote of Hemingway: "Gravely wounded by numerou s pieces of shrapnel from an enemy shell, with an admirable spirit of brotherhood, before taking care of himself, he rendered generous assistance to the Italian soldiers more seriously wounded by the same explosion and did not allow himself to be carried elsewhere until after they had been evacuated." See Mellow (1992), p. 61] For his deed, he was promoted to
first lieutenant
First lieutenant is a commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces; in some forces, it is an appointment.
The rank of lieutenant has different meanings in different military formations, but in most forces it is sub-divided into a se ...
(A.R.C.) and ''tenente'' (Italian Army).
He was only 18 at the time. Hemingway later said of the incident: "When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you ... Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you."
He sustained severe shrapnel wounds to both legs, underwent an immediate operation at a distribution center, and spent five days at a field hospital, before he was transferred for recuperation to the Red Cross hospital in Milan.
[Desnoyers, 3] He spent six months at the hospital, where he met
"Chink" Dorman-Smith. The two formed a strong friendship that lasted for decades.
While recuperating, Hemingway fell in love with
Agnes von Kurowsky, a Red Cross nurse seven years his senior. When Hemingway returned to the United States in January 1919, he believed Agnes would join him within months, and the two would marry. Instead, he received a letter from her in March with news that she was engaged to an Italian officer. Biographer
Jeffrey Meyers writes Agnes's rejection devastated and scarred the young man. In future relationships Hemingway followed a pattern of abandoning a wife before she abandoned him.
[Meyers (1985), 37–42] One of Hemingway's closest friendships from his Red Cross service was with William "Bill" Dodge Horne Jr., a fellow ambulance driver in Italy. Horne would later become a groomsman at Hemingway's first wedding and an honorary pallbearer at his funeral. Horne preserved a personal archive of their correspondence, photographs, and recollections—materials now housed at Princeton University Library.
His return home in 1919 was a difficult time of readjustment. Before the age of 20, he had gained from the war a maturity that was at odds with living at home without a job and with the need for recuperation.
[Meyers (1985), 45–53] As biographer
Michael S. Reynolds explains, "Hemingway could not really tell his parents what he thought when he saw his bloody knee." He was not able to tell them how scared he had been "in another country with surgeons who could not tell him in English if his leg was coming off or not."
That September, he went on a fishing and camping trip with high school friends to the back-country of
Michigan
Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
's
Upper Peninsula
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan—also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P. or Yoop—is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula b ...
.
The trip became the inspiration for his short story "
Big Two-Hearted River
"Big Two-Hearted River" is a two-part short story written by American author Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 Boni & Liveright edition of ''In Our Time (short story collection), In Our Time'', the first American volume of Hemingway's sho ...
", in which the
semi-autobiographical
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...
character
Nick Adams takes to the country to find solitude after coming home from war. A family friend offered Hemingway a job in
Toronto
Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...
, and with nothing else to do, he accepted. Late that year, he began as a freelancer and staff writer for the ''
Toronto Star Weekly''. He returned to Michigan the next June
and then moved to Chicago in September 1920 to live with friends, while still filing stories for the ''
Toronto Star
The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part of Torstar's Daily News Brands (Torstar), Daily News Brands division.
...
''.
In Chicago, he worked as an associate editor of the monthly journal ''Cooperative Commonwealth'', where he met novelist
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...
.
[Meyers (1985), 56–58]
He met
Hadley Richardson through his roommate's sister. Later, he claimed, "I knew she was the girl I was going to marry."
Red-haired, with a "nurturing instinct", Hadley was eight years older than Hemingway.
Despite the age difference, she seemed less mature than usual for a woman her age, probably because of her overprotective mother.
[Oliver (1999), 139] Bernice Kert, author of ''The Hemingway Women'', claims Hadley was "evocative" of Agnes, but Agnes lacked Hadley's childishness. After exchanging letters for a few months, Hemingway and Hadley decided to marry and travel to Europe.
[Kert (1983), 83–90]
They wanted to visit Rome, but Sherwood Anderson convinced them to go to Paris instead, writing letters of introduction for the young couple.
[Baker (1972), 7] They were married on September 3, 1921. Two months later, Hemingway signed on as a foreign correspondent for the ''Toronto Star'' and the couple left for Paris. Of Hemingway's marriage to Hadley, Meyers claims: "With Hadley, Hemingway achieved everything he had hoped for with Agnes: the love of a beautiful woman, a comfortable income, a life in Europe."
[Meyers (1985), 60–62]
Paris
Anderson suggested Paris because it was inexpensive and it was where "the most interesting people in the world" resided. There Hemingway would meet writers such as
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and ...
,
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
and
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
who "could help a young writer up the rungs of a career".
Hemingway was a "tall, handsome, muscular, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, square-jawed, soft-voiced young man."
He lived with Hadley in a small walk-up at 74 in the
Latin Quarter
The Latin Quarter of Paris (, ) is an urban university campus in the 5th and the 6th arrondissements of Paris. It is situated on the left bank of the Seine, around the Sorbonne.
Known for its student life, lively atmosphere, and bistros, t ...
, and rented a room nearby for work.
Stein, who was the bastion of
modernism
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
in Paris, became Hemingway's mentor and godmother to his son Jack; she introduced him to the expatriate artists and writers of the
Montparnasse Quarter, whom she referred to as the "
Lost Generation
The Lost Generation was the Demography, demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort that reached early adulthood during World War I, and preceded the Greatest Generation. The social generation is generally defined as people born from 1883 to 1900, ...
"—a term Hemingway popularized with the publication of ''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, following his experimental novel-in-fragments '' In Our Time (short story collection)'' (1925). It portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Par ...
''.
[Mellow (1992), 308] A regular at Stein's
salon
Salon may refer to:
Common meanings
* Beauty salon
A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment that provides Cosmetics, cosmetic treatments for people. Other variations of this type of business include hair salons, spas, day spas, ...
, Hemingway met influential painters such as
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
,
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , ; ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan Spanish painter, sculptor and Ceramic art, ceramist. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona ...
,
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic g ...
,
[Reynolds (2000), 28] and Luis Quintanilla.
[Spanier, 558] He eventually withdrew from Stein's influence, and their relationship deteriorated into a literary quarrel that spanned decades.
[Meyers (1985), 77–81]
Pound was older than Hemingway by 14 years when they met by chance in 1922 at
Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach (14 March 1887 – 5 October 1962), born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and World W ...
's bookstore
Shakespeare and Company. They visited Italy in 1923 and lived on the same street in 1924.
[Meyers (1985), 70–74] The two forged a strong friendship; in Hemingway Pound recognized and fostered a young talent.
Pound—who had just finished editing
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...
's ''
The Waste Land
''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United ...
''—introduced Hemingway to the Irish writer James Joyce,
with whom Hemingway frequently embarked on "alcoholic sprees".
[Meyers (1985), 82]

During his first 20 months in Paris, Hemingway filed 88 stories for the ''Toronto Star'' newspaper. He covered the
Greco-Turkish War, where he witnessed the
burning of Smyrna, and wrote travel pieces such as "Tuna Fishing in Spain" and "Trout Fishing All Across Europe: Spain Has the Best, Then Germany".
[Desnoyers, 5] Almost all his fiction and short stories were lost, when in December 1922 as she was traveling to join him in
Geneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
, Hadley lost a suitcase filled with his manuscripts at the train station
Gare de Lyon
The Gare de Lyon, officially Paris Gare de Lyon (), is one of the seven large mainline railway stations in Paris, France. It handles about 148.1 million passengers annually according to the estimates of the SNCF in 2018, with SNCF railways and ...
. He was devastated and furious.
[Meyers (1985), 69–70] Nine months later the couple returned to Toronto, where their son
John Hadley Nicanor was born on October 10, 1923. During their absence, Hemingway's first book, ''
Three Stories and Ten Poems
''Three Stories and Ten Poems'' is a collection of short stories and poems by Ernest Hemingway. It was privately published in 1923 in a run of 300 copies by Robert McAlmon's "Contact Publishing" in Paris.Oliver, Charles. (1999). ''Ernest Heming ...
'', was published in Paris. All that remained after the loss of the suitcase were two of the stories the volume contained; he wrote the third story early in 1923 while in Italy. A few months later, ''
in our time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
'' (without capitals) was produced in Paris. The small volume included 18
vignettes, a dozen of which he wrote the previous summer during his first visit to Spain, where he discovered the thrill of the
corrida. He considered Toronto boring, missed Paris, and wanted to return to the life of a writer, rather than live the life of a journalist.
[Baker (1972), 15–18]
Hemingway, Hadley, and their son (nicknamed Bumby) returned to Paris in January 1924 and moved into an apartment on the rue Notre-Dame des Champs.
Hemingway helped
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals ''The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review (1924), The Transatlant ...
edit ''
The Transatlantic Review'', which published works by Pound,
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos (; January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was an American novelist, most notable for his U.S.A. (trilogy), ''U.S.A.'' trilogy.
Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a ...
, Baroness
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (née Else Hildegard Plötz; 12 July 1874 – 14 December 1927) was a German avant-garde visual artist and poet, who was active in Greenwich Village, New York, from 1913 to 1923, where her radical self-displa ...
, and Stein, as well as some of Hemingway's own early stories such as "
Indian Camp".
[Meyers (1985), 126] When Hemingway's first collection of stories, ''
In Our Time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
'', was published in 1925, the dust jacket bore comments from Ford.
[Meyers (1985), 127] "Indian Camp" received considerable praise; Ford saw it as an important early story by a young writer, and critics in the United States praised Hemingway for reinvigorating the short-story genre with his crisp style and use of declarative sentences. Six months earlier, Hemingway had met
F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the pair formed a friendship of "admiration and hostility".
[Meyers (1985), 159–160] Fitzgerald had published ''
The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' () is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, a mysterious mi ...
'' the same year: Hemingway read it, liked it, and decided his next work had to be a novel.
[Baker (1972), 30–34]
The year before, Hemingway visited the
Festival of San Fermín
The festival of San Fermín is a week-long, traditional celebration held annually in the city of Pamplona, Navarre, Spain. The celebrations start at noon on 6 July and continue until midnight on 14 July. A firework (''chupinazo'') starts the cel ...
in
Pamplona
Pamplona (; ), historically also known as Pampeluna in English, is the capital city of the Navarre, Chartered Community of Navarre, in Spain.
Lying at near above sea level, the city (and the wider Cuenca de Pamplona) is located on the flood pl ...
, Spain, for the first time, where he became fascinated by
bullfighting
Bullfighting is a physical contest that involves a bullfighter attempting to subdue, immobilize, or kill a bull, usually according to a set of rules, guidelines, or cultural expectations.
There are several variations, including some forms wh ...
.
[Meyers (1985), 117–119] The Hemingways returned to Pamplona again in 1924 and a third time in June 1925; that year, they brought with them a group of American and British expatriates: Hemingway's Michigan boyhood friend Bill Smith,
Donald Ogden Stewart,
Lady Duff Twysden (recently divorced), her lover Pat Guthrie, and
Harold Loeb.
[Nagel (1996), 89]

A few days after the fiesta ended, on his birthday (July 21), he began to write the draft of what would become ''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, following his experimental novel-in-fragments '' In Our Time (short story collection)'' (1925). It portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Par ...
'', finishing eight weeks later.
[Meyers (1985), 189] A few months later, in December 1925, the Hemingways left to spend the winter in
Schruns
Schruns is a municipality in the Montafon valley (altitude 690 meters), in the Bludenz district of the westernmost Austrian state of Vorarlberg.
To the west is the famous Zimba mountain, often called the "Vorarlberger Matterhorn," which is ve ...
, Austria, where Hemingway began extensively revising the manuscript. Pauline Pfeiffer, the daughter of a wealthy
Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
family in
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...
, who came to Paris to work for ''
Vogue
Vogue may refer to:
Business
* ''Vogue'' (magazine), a US fashion magazine
** British ''Vogue'', a British fashion magazine
** '' Vogue Adria'', a fashion magazine for former Yugoslav countries
** ''Vogue Arabia'', an Arab fashion magazine
** ' ...
'' magazine, joined them in January. Against Hadley's advice, Pfeiffer urged Hemingway to sign a contract with
Scribner's
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City that has published several notable American authors, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjo ...
. He left Austria for a quick trip to New York to meet with the publishers and, on his return, began an affair with Pfeiffer during a stop in Paris, before returning to Schruns to finish the revisions in March. The manuscript arrived in New York in April; he corrected the final proof in Paris in August 1926, and Scribner's published the novel in October.
[Baker (1972), 44]
''The Sun Also Rises'' epitomized the post-war expatriate generation,
[Mellow (1992), 302] received good reviews and is "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work".
[Meyers (1985), 192] Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor
Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever"; he believed the characters in ''The Sun Also Rises'' may have been "battered" but were not lost.
[Baker (1972), 82]
Hemingway's marriage to Hadley deteriorated as he was working on ''The Sun Also Rises''.
In early 1926, Hadley became aware of his affair with Pfeiffer, who came to Pamplona with them that July.
[Baker (1972), 43] On their return to Paris, Hadley asked for a separation; in November she formally requested a divorce. They split their possessions while Hadley accepted Hemingway's offer of the proceeds from ''The Sun Also Rises''. They were divorced in January 1927, and Hemingway married Pfeiffer in May.
[Meyers (1985), 172]
Before his marriage to Pfeiffer, Hemingway converted to Catholicism. They honeymooned in
Le Grau-du-Roi
Le Grau-du-Roi (; ) is a commune in the Gard department in southern France. It is the only commune in Gard to have a frontage on the Mediterranean. To the west is the Herault department and La Grande-Motte village, and to the east is the Bouc ...
, where he contracted
anthrax
Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium '' Bacillus anthracis'' or ''Bacillus cereus'' biovar ''anthracis''. Infection typically occurs by contact with the skin, inhalation, or intestinal absorption. Symptom onset occurs between one ...
, and he planned his next collection of short stories, ''
Men Without Women'', which was published in October 1927,
[Meyers (1985), 195] and included his
boxing
Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two people – usually wearing protective equipment, such as boxing glove, protective gloves, hand wraps, and mouthguards – throwing Punch (combat), punch ...
story "
Fifty Grand". ''
Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan may refer to:
Internationalism
* World citizen, one who eschews traditional geopolitical divisions derived from national citizenship
* Cosmopolitanism, the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community
* Cosmopolitan ...
'' magazine editor-in-chief
Ray Long praised "Fifty Grand", calling it, "one of the best short stories that ever came to my hands ... the best prize-fight story I ever read ... a remarkable piece of realism."
By the end of the year Pauline was pregnant and wanted to move back to America. Dos Passos recommended
Key West
Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida, at the southern end of the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, it con ...
, and they left Paris in March 1928. Hemingway suffered a severe head injury in their Paris bathroom when he pulled a
skylight
A skylight (sometimes called a rooflight) is a light-permitting structure or window, usually made of transparent or translucent glass, that forms all or part of the roof space of a building for daylighting and ventilation purposes.
History
O ...
down on his head thinking he was pulling on a toilet chain. This left him with a prominent forehead scar, which he carried for the rest of his life. When Hemingway was asked about the scar, he was reluctant to answer. After his departure from Paris, Hemingway "never again lived in a big city".
[Meyers (1985), 204]
Key West

Hemingway and Pauline went to
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by List of cities in Missouri, population and area. The city lies within Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson, Clay County, Missouri, Clay, and Pl ...
, where their son
Patrick was born on June 28, 1928, at
Bell Memorial Hospital. Pauline had a difficult delivery; Hemingway wrote a fictionalized version of the event in ''
A Farewell to Arms
''A Farewell to Arms'' is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, set during the Italian campaign of World War I. First published in 1929, it is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant () in the a ...
''. After Patrick's birth, they traveled to Wyoming, Massachusetts, and New York.
[Meyers (1985), 208] On December 6, Hemingway was in New York visiting Bumby, about to board a train to Florida, when he received the news that his father Clarence had killed himself.
[Clarence Hemingway used his father's Civil War pistol to shoot himself. See Meyers (1985), 2] Hemingway was devastated, having earlier written to his father telling him not to worry about financial difficulties; the letter arrived minutes after the suicide. He realized how Hadley must have felt after her own father's suicide in 1903, and said, "I'll probably go the same way."
Upon his return to Key West in December, Hemingway worked on the draft of ''A Farewell to Arms'' before leaving for France in January. He had finished it the previous August but delayed the revision. The serialization in ''
Scribner's Magazine
''Scribner's Magazine'' was an American periodical published by the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons from January 1887 to May 1939. ''Scribner's Magazine'' was the second magazine out of the Scribner's firm, after the publication of ...
'' was scheduled to appear in May. In April, he was still working on the ending, which he may have rewritten as many as seventeen times. The completed novel was published on September 27, 1929.
[Meyers (1985), 215] Biographer
James Mellow believes ''A Farewell to Arms'' established Hemingway's stature as a major American writer and displayed a level of complexity not apparent in ''The Sun Also Rises''.
[Mellow (1992), 378] In Spain in mid-1929, Hemingway researched his next work, ''
Death in the Afternoon
''Death in the Afternoon'' is a non-fiction book written by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understat ...
''. He wanted to write a comprehensive
treatise
A treatise is a Formality, formal and systematic written discourse on some subject concerned with investigating or exposing the main principles of the subject and its conclusions."mwod:treatise, Treatise." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Acc ...
on bullfighting, explaining the toreros and corridas complete with glossaries and appendices, because he believed bullfighting was "of great tragic interest, being literally of life and death."
During the early 1930s, Hemingway spent his winters in Key West and summers in Wyoming, where he found "the most beautiful country he had seen in the American West" and hunted deer, elk, and grizzly bear.
[Meyers (1985), 222] He was joined there by Dos Passos. In November 1930, after taking Dos Passos to the train station in
Billings, Montana
Billings is the most populous Lists of populated places in the United States, city in the U.S. state of Montana, with a population of 117,116 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located in the south-central portion of the state, i ...
, Hemingway broke his arm in a car accident. He was hospitalized for seven weeks, with Pauline tending to him. The nerves in his writing hand took as long as a year to heal, during which time he suffered intense pain.

His third child,
Gloria Hemingway
Gloria Hemingway (born Gregory Hancock Hemingway, November 12, 1931 – October 1, 2001) was an American physician and writer who was the third and youngest child of author Ernest Hemingway. Although she was born a male and lived most of her ...
, was born a year later on November 12, 1931, in Kansas City as "Gregory Hancock Hemingway".
[She would undergo ]sex reassignment surgery
Gender-affirming surgery (GAS) is a surgical procedure, or series of procedures, that alters a person's physical appearance and sexual characteristics to resemble those associated with their gender identity. The phrase is most often associat ...
between 1988 and 1994. See Meyers (2020), 413[Oliver (1999), 144] Pauline's uncle bought the couple a
house
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air c ...
in Key West with a carriage house, the second floor of which was converted into a writing studio.
[Meyers (1985), 222–227] He invited friends—including
Waldo Peirce, Dos Passos, and
Max Perkins—to join him on fishing trips and on an all-male expedition to the
Dry Tortugas
Dry Tortugas National Park is a national park of the United States located about west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico, in the United States. The park preserves Fort Jefferson and the several Dry Tortugas islands, the westernmost and most iso ...
. He continued to travel to Europe and to Cuba, and—although in 1933 he wrote of Key West, "We have a fine house here, and kids are all well"—Mellow believes he "was plainly restless".
[Mellow (1992), 424]
In 1933, Hemingway and Pauline went on safari to Kenya. The 10-week trip provided material for ''
Green Hills of Africa'', as well as for the short stories "
The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Set in Africa, it was published in the September 1936 issue of ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine. The story was eventually adapted to the screen as the Zoltan Korda film '' ...
".
[Desnoyers, 9] The couple visited
Mombasa
Mombasa ( ; ) is a coastal city in southeastern Kenya along the Indian Ocean. It was the first capital of British East Africa, before Nairobi was elevated to capital status in 1907. It now serves as the capital of Mombasa County. The town is ...
,
Nairobi
Nairobi is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Kenya. The city lies in the south-central part of Kenya, at an elevation of . The name is derived from the Maasai language, Maasai phrase , which translates to 'place of cool waters', a ...
, and
Machakos in Kenya; then moved on to
Tanganyika Territory
Tanganyika was a colonial territory in East Africa which was administered by the United Kingdom in various forms from 1916 until 1961. It was initially administered under military occupation. From 20 July 1922, it was formalised into a League o ...
, where they hunted in the
Serengeti
The Serengeti ( ) ecosystem is a geographical region in Africa, spanning the Mara and Arusha Regions of Tanzania. The protected area within the region includes approximately of land, including the Serengeti National Park and several game r ...
, around
Lake Manyara, and west and southeast of present-day
Tarangire National Park. Their guide was the noted "white hunter"
Philip Percival
Philip Hope Percival (1886–1966) was an English-born renowned white hunter and early safari guide in colonial Kenya. During his career, he guided Theodore Roosevelt, Baron Rothschild, and Ernest Hemingway on African hunts. Hemingway modelle ...
who had guided
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), also known as Teddy or T.R., was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt previously was involved in New York (state), New York politics, incl ...
on his 1909 safari. During these travels, Hemingway contracted
amoebic dysentery
Amoebiasis, or amoebic dysentery, is an infection of the intestines caused by a parasitic amoeba '' Entamoeba histolytica''. Amoebiasis can be present with no, mild, or severe symptoms. Symptoms may include lethargy, loss of weight, coloni ...
that caused a prolapsed intestine, and he was evacuated by plane to Nairobi, an experience reflected in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". On Hemingway's return to Key West in early 1934, he began work on ''Green Hills of Africa'', which he published in 1935 to mixed reviews.
He purchased a boat in 1934, naming it the ''
Pilar'', and began to sail the
Caribbean
The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...
.
[Meyers (1985), 280] He arrived at
Bimini
Bimini is the westernmost district of the Bahamas and comprises a chain of islands located about due east of Miami. Bimini is the closest point in the Bahamas to the mainland United States and approximately west-northwest of Nassau. The popula ...
in 1935, where he spent a considerable amount of time.
During this period he worked on ''
To Have and Have Not'', published in 1937 while he was in Spain, which became the only novel he wrote during the 1930s.
[Meyers (1985), 292]
Spanish Civil War
Hemingway had been following developments in Spain since early in his career
[Baker (1972), 224] and from 1931 it became clear that there would be another European war. Hemingway predicted war would happen in the late 1930s. Baker writes that Hemingway did not expect Spain to "become a sort of international testing-ground for Germany, Italy, and Russia before the Spanish Civil War was over".
[Baker (1972), 227] Despite Pauline's reluctance, he signed with
North American Newspaper Alliance to cover the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
,
[Mellow (1992), 488] and sailed from New York on February 27, 1937.
[Muller (2019), 47.] Journalist and writer
Martha Gellhorn
Martha Ellis Gellhorn (8 November 1908 – 15 February 1998) was an American novelist, travel writer and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world confli ...
accompanied Hemingway. He had met her in Key West a year earlier. Like Hadley, Martha was a St. Louis native and, like Pauline, had worked for ''Vogue'' in Paris. According to Kert, Martha "never catered to him the way other women did".
[Kert (1983), 287–295]
He arrived in Spain in March with Dutch filmmaker
Joris Ivens
Georg Henri Anton "Joris" Ivens (18 November 1898 – 28 June 1989) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker. Among the notable films he directed or co-directed are '' A Tale of the Wind'', ''The Spanish Earth'', ''Rain'', ''...A Valparaiso'', '' Misèr ...
.
[Koch (2005), 87] Ivens, who was filming ''
The Spanish Earth
''The Spanish Earth'' is a 1937 anti-fascist film made during the Spanish Civil War in support of the democratically elected Republicans, whose forces included a wide range from the political left like communists, socialists, anarchists, to mode ...
'', intended to replace John Dos Passos with Hemingway as screenwriter. Dos Passos had left the project when his friend and Spanish translator
José Robles was arrested and later executed.
[Meyers (1985), 311] The incident changed Dos Passos's opinion of the
leftist republicans, and caused a rift with Hemingway.
[Koch (2005), 164] Back in the U.S. that summer, Hemingway prepared the soundtrack for the film. It was screened at the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...
in July.
[Baker (1972), 233]
In late August he returned to France and flew from Paris to
Barcelona
Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
and then to
Valencia
Valencia ( , ), formally València (), is the capital of the Province of Valencia, province and Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, the same name in Spain. It is located on the banks of the Turia (r ...
.
[Muller (2019), 109] In September he visited the front in
Belchite and then on to
Teruel
Teruel () is a city in Aragon, located in eastern Spain, and is also the capital of Teruel (province), Teruel Province. It had a population of 35,900 as of 2022, making it the least populated provincial capital in Spain. It is noted for its har ...
.
[Muller (2019), 135–138] On his return to Madrid Hemingway wrote his only play, ''
The Fifth Column'', as
the city was being bombarded by the
Francoist army.
[Koch (2005), 134] He went back to Key West for a few months in January 1938. It was a frustrating time: he found it hard to write, fretted over poor reviews for ''To Have and Have Not'', bickered with Pauline, followed the news from Spain avidly and planned the next trip.
[Muller (2019), 155–161] He took two trips to Spain in 1938. In November he visited the location of the
Battle of the Ebro
The Battle of the Ebro (, ) was the longest and largest battle of the Spanish Civil War and the greatest, in terms of manpower, logistics and material ever fought on Spanish soil. It took place between July and November 1938, with fighting mainly ...
, the last republican stand, along with other British and American journalists.
[Meyers (1985), 321] They arrived to find the last bridge destroyed and had to retreat across the turbulent
Ebro
The Ebro (Spanish and Basque ; , , ) is a river of the north and northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, in Spain. It rises in Cantabria and flows , almost entirely in an east-southeast direction. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea, forming a de ...
in a rowboat, Hemingway at the oars, "pulling for dear life".
[Muller (2019), 203][Thomas (2001), 833]
In early 1939, Hemingway crossed to Cuba in his boat to live in the
Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana. This was the separation phase of a slow and painful split from Pauline, which began when Hemingway met Martha Gellhorn.
[Meyers (1985), 326] Martha soon joined him in Cuba, and they rented ''
Finca Vigía'' ("Lookout Farm"), a property from Havana. That summer while visiting with Pauline and the children in Wyoming, she took the children and left him. When his divorce from Pauline was finalized, he and Martha were married on November 20, 1940, in
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Cheyenne ( or ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Wyoming, most populous city of the U.S. state of Wyoming. It is the county seat of Laramie County, Wyoming, Laramie County, with 65,132 reside ...
.
Hemingway followed the pattern established after his divorce from Hadley and moved again. He split his time between Cuba and the newly established resort
Sun Valley.
[Meyers (1985), 334] He was at work on ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', which he began in March 1939 and finished in July 1940.
His pattern was to move around while working on a manuscript, and he wrote ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' in Cuba, Wyoming, and Sun Valley.
Published that October,
it became a book-of-the-month choice, sold half a million copies within months, was nominated for a
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
, and as Meyers describes, "triumphantly re-established Hemingway's literary reputation".
[Meyers (1985), 334–338]
In January 1941, Martha was sent to China on assignment for ''
Collier's
}
''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter F. Collier, Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened i ...
'' magazine.
Hemingway went with her, sending in dispatches for the newspaper ''
PM''. Meyers writes that Hemingway had little enthusiasm for the trip or for China,
[Meyers (1985), 356–361] Although his dispatches for ''PM'' provided incisive insights of the
Sino-Japanese War according to Reynolds, with analysis of Japanese incursions into the
Philippines
The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
sparking an "American war in the Pacific".
[Reynolds (2012), 320] In August, Hemingway returned to ''Finca Vigía''. In September, he left for Sun Valley.
[Reynolds (2012), 324–328]
World War II
The United States
entered the war after the
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Territory of ...
in December 1941.
[Reynolds (2012), 332–333] Back in Cuba, Hemingway refitted the ''Pilar'' as a
Q-boat and went on patrol for German
U-boat
U-boats are Submarine#Military, naval submarines operated by Germany, including during the World War I, First and Second World Wars. The term is an Anglicization#Loanwords, anglicized form of the German word , a shortening of (), though the G ...
s.
[Germany targeted ships leaving the Lago refinery in ]Aruba
Aruba, officially the Country of Aruba, is a constituent island country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in the southern Caribbean Sea north of the Venezuelan peninsula of Paraguaná Peninsula, Paraguaná and northwest of Curaçao. In 19 ...
to transport oil products to England; in 1942, more than 250 ships were destroyed. See Reynolds (2012), 336 He also created a counterintelligence unit headquartered in his guesthouse to surveil
Falangist
Falangism () was the political ideology of three political parties in Spain that were known as the Falange, namely first the Falange Española, the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FE de las JONS), and afterwa ...
s,
[Mellow (1992), 526–527] and Nazi sympathizers.
[Meyers (1985), 337] Martha and his friends thought his activities "little more than a diverting racket", but the FBI began watching him and compiled a 124-page file.
[He would remain under surveillance until his death. See Meyers (1985), 384][Meyers (1985), 367] Martha wanted Hemingway in Europe as a journalist and failed to understand his reticence to take part in another European war. They fought frequently and bitterly, and he drank too much,
[Reynolds (2012), 364–365] until she left for Europe to report for ''
Collier's
}
''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter F. Collier, Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened i ...
'' in September 1943.
[Reynolds (2012), 368] On a visit to Cuba in March 1944, Hemingway was bullying and abusive with Martha. Reynolds writes that "looking backward from 1960–61
nyonemight say that his behavior was a manifestation of the depression that eventually destroyed him".
A few weeks later, he contacted ''Collier's'' who made him their
front-line correspondent.
[Reynolds (2012), 373–374] He was in Europe from May 1944 to March 1945.

When he arrived in London, he met ''
Time
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' magazine correspondent
Mary Welsh, with whom he became infatuated. Martha had been forced to cross the Atlantic in a ship filled with explosives because Hemingway refused to help her get a press pass on a plane, and she arrived in London to find him hospitalized with a concussion from a car accident. She was unsympathetic to his plight; she accused him of being a bully and told him that she was "through, absolutely finished".
[Kert (1983), 393–398] The last time that Hemingway saw Martha was in March 1945 as he prepared to return to Cuba;
[Meyers (1985), 416] their divorce was finalized later that year.
Meanwhile, he had asked Mary Welsh to marry him on their third meeting.
Hemingway sustained a severe head-wound that required 57 stitches. Still suffering symptoms of the concussion,
[Reynolds (2012), 377] he accompanied troops to the
Normandy landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and ...
wearing a large head bandage. The military treated him as "precious cargo" and he was not allowed ashore.
[Meyers (1985), 400] The
landing craft
Landing craft are small and medium seagoing watercraft, such as boats and barges, used to convey a landing force (infantry and vehicles) from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. The term excludes landing ships, which are larger. ...
he was on came within sight of
Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach was one of five beach landing sectors of the amphibious assault component of Operation Overlord during the Second World War.
On June 6, 1944, the Allies of World War II, Allies invaded German military administration in occupied Fra ...
before coming under enemy fire when it turned back. Hemingway later wrote in ''Collier's'' that he could see "the first, second, third, fourth and fifth waves of
anding troopslay where they had fallen, looking like so many heavily laden bundles on the flat pebbly stretch between the sea and first cover". Mellow explains that, on that first day, none of the correspondents were allowed to land and Hemingway was returned to the ''
Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Lynde Dix (April 4, 1802July 17, 1887) was an American advocate on behalf of the poor insane, mentally ill. By her vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, she helped create the fir ...
''. Late in July, he attached himself to "the
22nd Infantry Regiment commanded by Col.
Charles 'Buck' Lanham, as it drove toward Paris", and Hemingway became de facto leader to a small band of village militia in
Rambouillet
Rambouillet (, , ) is a Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Yvelines Departments of France, department in the Île-de-France Regions of France, region of France. It is located beyond the outskirts of Paris, southwest of its Kilometr ...
outside of Paris.
[Meyers (1985), 398–405] Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell Jr. (22 March 1924 – 23 May 2012) was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary ...
remarks: "Hemingway got into considerable trouble playing infantry captain to a group of Resistance people that he gathered because a correspondent is not supposed to lead troops, even if he does it well."
This was, in fact, in contravention of the
Geneva Convention
upright=1.15, The original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are international humanitarian laws consisting of four treaties and three additional protocols that establish international legal standards for humanitarian t ...
, and Hemingway was brought up on formal charges; he said that he "beat the rap" by claiming that he only offered advice.
[Lynn (1987), 518–519]
He was present at the
liberation of Paris
The liberation of Paris () was a battle that took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25 August 1944. Paris had been occupied by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Armisti ...
on August 25; however contrary to legend, he was not the first into the city nor did he liberate the
Ritz.
[Meyers (1985) 408–411] While there, he visited Sylvia Beach and met Picasso with Mary Welsh, and in a spirit of happiness, forgave Gertrude Stein.
[Mellow (1992), 535–540] Later that year, he observed heavy fighting at the
Battle of Hürtgen Forest
The Battle of Hürtgen Forest () was a series of battles fought from 19 September to 16 December 1944, between United States Armed Forces, American and Wehrmacht, German forces on the Western Front (World War II), Western Front during World War ...
.
On December 17, 1944, he traveled to Luxembourg, in spite of illness, to report on
The Battle of the Bulge. As soon as he arrived, however, Lanham referred him to the doctors, who hospitalized him with pneumonia; he recovered a week later, but most of the fighting was over.
He was awarded a
Bronze Star
The Bronze Star Medal (BSM) is a United States Armed Forces decoration awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces for either heroic achievement, heroic service, meritorious achievement, or meritorious service in a combat zone.
Wh ...
for bravery in 1947, in recognition for having been "under fire in combat areas in order to obtain an accurate picture of conditions".
Cuba and the Nobel Prize

Hemingway said he "was out of business as a writer" from 1942 to 1945.
[qtd. in Mellow (1992), 552] In 1946 he married Mary, who had an
ectopic pregnancy
Ectopic pregnancy is a complication of pregnancy in which the embryo attaches outside the uterus. Signs and symptoms classically include abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding, but fewer than 50 percent of affected women have both of these sympto ...
five months later. The Hemingway family suffered a series of accidents and health problems in the years following the war: in a 1945 car accident, he injured his knee and sustained another head wound. A few years later Mary broke first her right ankle and then her left in successive skiing accidents. A 1947 car accident left Patrick with a head wound, severely ill and delirious. The doctor in Cuba diagnosed
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia () is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations (typically, Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, thought disorder, disorganized thinking and behavior, and Reduced affect display, f ...
, and sent him for 18 sessions of
electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a psychiatry, psychiatric treatment that causes a generalized seizure by passing electrical current through the brain. ECT is often used as an intervention for mental disorders when other treatments are inadequ ...
.
[Meyers (1985), 420–421]
Hemingway sank into depression as his literary friends began to die: in 1939
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats (, 13 June 186528 January 1939), popularly known as W. B. Yeats, was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th century in literature, 20th-century literature. He was ...
and
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals ''The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review (1924), The Transatlant ...
; in 1940
F. Scott Fitzgerald; in 1941
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...
and
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
; in 1946
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and ...
; and the following year in 1947, Max Perkins, Hemingway's long-time Scribner's editor, and friend.
[Mellow (1992) 548–550] During this period, he suffered from severe headaches, high blood pressure, weight problems, and eventually diabetes—much of which was the result of previous accidents and many years of heavy drinking.
[Desnoyers, 12]
In January 1946, he began work on ''
The Garden of Eden
In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden (; ; ) or Garden of God ( and ), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the biblical paradise described in Book of Genesis, Genesis 2–3 and Book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 28 and 31..
The location of Ede ...
'', finishing 800 pages by June.
[''The Garden of Eden'' was published posthumously in 1986. See Meyers (1985), 436] During the post-war years, he also began work on a trilogy tentatively titled "The Land", "The Sea" and "The Air", which he wanted to combine in one novel titled ''The Sea Book''. Both projects stalled. Mellow writes that Hemingway's inability to write was "a symptom of his troubles" during these years.
[The manuscript for ''The Sea Book'' was published posthumously as '' Islands in the Stream'' in 1970. See Mellow (1992), 552]
In 1948, Hemingway and Mary traveled to Europe, staying in
Venice
Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
for several months. While there, Hemingway fell in love with the then 19-year-old
Adriana Ivancich. The platonic love affair inspired the novel ''
Across the River and into the Trees
''Across the River and into the Trees'' is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1950, after first being serialized in ''Cosmopolitan (magazine), Cosmopolitan'' magazine earlier that year. The titl ...
'', written in Cuba during a time of strife with Mary, and published in 1950 to negative reviews. The following year, furious at the critical reception of ''Across the River and Into the Trees'', Hemingway wrote the draft of ''
The Old Man and the Sea
''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiag ...
'' in eight weeks, saying that it was "the best I can write ever for all of my life".
Published in September 1952,
[Reynolds (2012), 656] ''The Old Man and the Sea'' became a book-of-the-month selection, made Hemingway an international celebrity, and won the
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
in May 1953. In June, he departed Cuba for his second trip to Africa.
[Desnoyers, 13][Meyers (1985), 489]
In January 1954 while in Africa, Hemingway was almost fatally injured in successive plane crashes. He had chartered a sightseeing flight over the
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo (, ; ) was a Belgian colonial empire, Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Repu ...
as a Christmas present to Mary. On their way to photograph
Murchison Falls
Murchison Falls, also known as Kabalega Falls, is a waterfall in Uganda, located at the apex of Lake Albert on the White Nile. At the top of Murchison Falls, the Nile forces its way through a gap in the rocks, only wide, and tumbles , before fl ...
from the air, the plane struck an abandoned utility pole and was forced into a crash landing. Hemingway sustained injuries to his back and shoulder. Mary sustained broken ribs and went into shock. After a night in the brush, they chartered a boat on the river and arrived in
Butiaba, where they were met by a pilot who had been searching for them. He assured them he could fly out, but the landing strip was too rough and the plane exploded in flames. Mary and the pilot escaped through a broken window. Hemingway had to smash his way out by battering the door open with his head.
[Reynolds (2012), 550]
Hemingway suffered burns and another serious head injury, that caused
cerebral fluid to leak from the injury. They eventually arrived in
Entebbe
Entebbe is a city in Central Region, Uganda, Central Uganda which is located on Lake Victoria peninsula, approximately southwest of the Ugandan capital city, Kampala. Entebbe was once the seat of government for the Protectorate of Uganda pri ...
to find reporters covering the story of Hemingway's death. He briefed the reporters and spent the next few weeks recuperating in
Nairobi
Nairobi is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Kenya. The city lies in the south-central part of Kenya, at an elevation of . The name is derived from the Maasai language, Maasai phrase , which translates to 'place of cool waters', a ...
. Despite his injuries, Hemingway accompanied Patrick and his wife on a planned fishing expedition in February, but pain caused him to be irascible and difficult to get along with.
[Mellow (1992), 588] When a
bushfire
A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...
broke out, he was again injured, sustaining second-degree burns on his legs, front torso, lips, left hand and right forearm.
[Meyers (1985), 505–507]
Months later in
Venice
Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
, Mary reported to friends the full extent of Hemingway's injuries: two cracked
discs, a kidney and liver rupture, a
dislocated shoulder
A dislocated shoulder is a condition in which the head of the humerus is detached from the glenoid fossa. Symptoms include shoulder pain and instability. Complications may include a Bankart lesion, Hill-Sachs lesion, rotator cuff tear, or Injur ...
and a broken skull.
The accidents may have precipitated the physical deterioration that was to follow. After the plane crashes, Hemingway, who had been "a thinly controlled alcoholic throughout much of his life, drank more heavily than usual to combat the pain of his injuries."

In October 1954, Hemingway received the
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...
. He modestly told the press that
Carl Sandburg
Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg w ...
,
Isak Dinesen
Baroness Karen Christentze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote in Danish and English. She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries; Ta ...
and
Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book ''The Drawings of the Florentine Painters'' was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a large ...
deserved the prize, but he gladly accepted the prize money.
[Baker (1972), 38] Mellow says Hemingway "had coveted the Nobel Prize", but when he won it, months after his plane accidents and their worldwide press coverage, "there must have been a lingering suspicion in Hemingway's mind that his obituary notices had played a part in the academy's decision."
[Mellow (1992), 588–589] He was still recuperating and decided against traveling to Stockholm.
[Meyers (1985), 509] Instead he sent a speech to be read in which he defined the writer's life:
Since his return from Africa, Hemingway had been slowly writing his "African Journal".
[Published in 1999 as '' True at First Light''. See Oliver (1999), 333] Late in 1955 and early into 1956 he was bedridden with a variety of illnesses.
[Meyers (1985), 511] He was ordered to stop drinking so as to mitigate liver damage, advice he initially followed but eventually disregarded. In October 1956, he returned to Europe and visited ailing
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
writer
Pio Baroja, who died a few weeks later. During the trip, Hemingway again became sick and was treated for a variety of ailments including liver disease and high blood pressure.
[Meyers (1985), 512]
In November 1956, while staying in Paris, he was reminded of trunks he had stored in the Ritz Hotel in 1928 and never retrieved. Upon re-claiming and opening the trunks, Hemingway discovered they were filled with notebooks and writing from his Paris years. Excited about the discovery, when he returned to Cuba in early 1957, he began to shape the recovered work into his memoir ''
A Moveable Feast
''A Moveable Feast'' is a memoir by Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expatriate journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously in 1964. The book chronicles Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Ric ...
''.
[Meyers (1985), 533] In 1959, he ended a period of intense activity: he finished ''A Moveable Feast'' (scheduled to be released the following year); brought ''
True at First Light'' to 200,000 words; added chapters to ''The Garden of Eden''; and worked on ''
Islands in the Stream''. The last three were stored in a safe deposit box in Havana as he focused on the finishing touches for ''A Moveable Feast''. Reynolds claims it was during this period that Hemingway slid into depression, from which he was unable to recover.
''Finca Vigía'' became crowded with guests and tourists, as Hemingway considered a permanent move to Idaho. In 1959, he bought a home overlooking the
Big Wood River, outside Ketchum and left Cuba—although he apparently remained on easy terms with the
Castro government, telling ''The New York Times'' he was "delighted" with Castro's overthrow of
Batista
Batista is a Spanish language, Spanish or Portuguese language, Portuguese surname. Notable persons with the name include:
* Batista (footballer, born 1955), Brazilian football player João Batista da Silva
* Dave Bautista, Batista (wrestler) (Dave ...
.
[Meyers (1985), 516–519] He was in Cuba in November 1959, between returning from Pamplona and traveling west to Idaho, and in 1960, for his 61st birthday.
[Reynolds (2000), 332, 344]
In 1960, he and Mary decided to leave, after hearing the news that Castro wanted to nationalize property owned by Americans and other foreign nationals.
On July 25, 1960, the Hemingways left Cuba for the last time, leaving art and manuscripts in a bank vault in Havana. After the 1961
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front ...
, ''Finca Vigía'' was
expropriated
Eminent domain, also known as land acquisition, compulsory purchase, resumption, resumption/compulsory acquisition, or expropriation, is the compulsory acquisition of private property for public use. It does not include the power to take and t ...
by the Cuban government, complete with Hemingway's collection of about 5,000 books.
[Mellow (1992), 599]
Idaho and suicide

After leaving Cuba, in Sun Valley, Hemingway continued to rework the material that was published as ''A Moveable Feast'' through the 1950s.
In mid-1959, he visited Spain to research a series of bullfighting articles commissioned by ''
Life
Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...
'' magazine.
[Meyers (1985), 520] ''Life'' wanted only 10,000 words, but the manuscript grew out of control. For the first time in his life he could not organize his writing, so he asked
A. E. Hotchner to travel to Cuba to help him. Hotchner helped trim the ''Life'' piece down to 40,000 words, and Scribner's agreed to a full-length book version (''
The Dangerous Summer
''The Dangerous Summer'' is a nonfiction book by Ernest Hemingway published posthumously in 1985 and written in 1959 and 1960. The book describes the rivalry between Spanish-style bullfighting, bullfighters Luis Miguel Gonzalez Lucas, Luis Miguel ...
'') of almost 130,000 words.
[Reynolds (1999), 544–547]
Hotchner found Hemingway to be "unusually hesitant, disorganized, and confused",
[qtd. in Mellow (1992), 598–600] and suffering badly from failing eyesight.
[Meyers (1985), 542–544] He left Cuba for the last time on July 25, 1960. Mary went with him to New York where he set up a small office and attempted unsuccessfully to work. Soon after, he left New York, traveling without Mary to Spain to be photographed for the front cover of ''Life'' magazine. A few days later the news reported that he was seriously ill and on the verge of dying, which panicked Mary until she received a cable from him telling her, "Reports false. Enroute Madrid. Love Papa."
He was, in fact, seriously ill, and believed himself to be on the verge of a breakdown.
Feeling lonely, he took to his bed for days, retreating into silence, despite having the first installments of ''The Dangerous Summer'' published in ''Life'' that September to good reviews.
[Mellow (1992), 598–601] In October, he went back to New York, where he refused to leave Mary's apartment, presuming that he was being watched. She quickly took him to Idaho, where they were met at the train station in Ketchum by local physician George Saviers.
He was concerned about finances, missed Cuba, his books, and his life there, and fretted that he would never return to retrieve the manuscripts that he had left in a bank vault.
[Reynolds (1999), 348] He believed the manuscripts that would be published as ''Islands in the Stream'' and ''True at First Light'' were lost.
[Reynolds (1999), 354] He became paranoid, believing that the FBI was actively monitoring his movements in Ketchum.
[The FBI had opened a file on him during World War II, when he used the ''Pilar'' to patrol the waters off Cuba, and ]J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American attorney and law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first director of the Federal Bureau o ...
had an agent in Havana watch him during the 1950s, see Mellow (1992), 597–598; and appeared to be monitoring his movements at that time, as an agent documented in a letter written a few months later, in January 1961, about Hemingway's stay at the Mayo clinic. see Meyers (1985), 543–544 Mary was unable to care for her husband and it was anathema for a man of Hemingway's generation to accept he suffered from mental illness. At the end of November, Saviers flew him to the
Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic () is a Nonprofit organization, private American Academic health science centre, academic Medical centers in the United States, medical center focused on integrated health care, healthcare, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science ...
in Minnesota on the pretext that he was to be treated for
hypertension
Hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, is a Chronic condition, long-term Disease, medical condition in which the blood pressure in the artery, arteries is persistently elevated. High blood pressure usually does not cause symptoms i ...
.
He was checked in under Saviers's name to maintain anonymity.
Meyers writes that "an aura of secrecy surrounds Hemingway's treatment at the Mayo" but confirms that he was treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as many as 15 times in December 1960. Reynolds gained access to Hemingway's records at the Mayo, which document 10 ECT sessions. The doctors in Rochester told Hemingway the depressive state for which he was being treated may have been caused by his long-term use of
Reserpine
Reserpine is a drug that is used for the treatment of hypertension, high blood pressure, usually in combination with a thiazide diuretic or vasodilator. Large clinical trials have shown that combined treatment with reserpine plus a thiazide diur ...
and
Ritalin
Methylphenidate, sold under the brand names Ritalin ( ) and Concerta ( ) among others, is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant used in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy. It may be taken by mouth ...
. Of the ECT therapy, Hemingway told Hotchner, "What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient."
[Hotchner (1983), 280] In late January 1961 he was sent home, as Meyers writes, "in ruins". Asked to provide a tribute to President
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected p ...
in February he could only produce a few sentences after a week's effort.
A few months later, on April 21, Mary found Hemingway with a shotgun in the kitchen. She called Saviers, who admitted Hemingway to the Sun Valley Hospital under sedation. Once the weather cleared, Saviers flew again to Rochester with his patient.
[Meyers (1985), 551] Hemingway underwent three electroshock treatments during that visit. He was released at the end of June and was home in Ketchum on June 30.
Two days later Hemingway "quite deliberately" shot himself with his favorite shotgun in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961. Meyers writes that he unlocked the basement storeroom where his guns were kept, went upstairs to the front entrance foyer, "pushed two shells into the twelve-gauge
Boss shotgun ... put the end of the barrel into his mouth, pulled the trigger and blew out his brains." In 2010, however, it was argued that Hemingway never owned a Boss and that the suicide gun was actually made by W. & C. Scott & Son, his favorite one that was used at shooting competitions in Cuba, duck hunts in Italy or at a safari in East Africa.

When the authorities arrived, Mary was sedated and taken to the hospital. Returning to the house the next day, she cleaned the house and saw to the funeral and travel arrangements. Bernice Kert writes that it "did not seem to her a conscious lie" when she told the press that his death had been accidental.
[Kert (1983), 504] In a press interview five years later, Mary confirmed that he had shot himself. Family and friends flew to Ketchum for the funeral, officiated by the local Catholic priest, who believed that the death had been accidental.
An altar boy fainted at the head of the casket during the funeral, and Hemingway's brother Leicester wrote: "It seemed to me Ernest would have approved of it all."
Hemingway's behavior during his final years had been similar to that of his father before he killed himself;
[Burwell (1996), 234] his father may have had
hereditary hemochromatosis
Hereditary haemochromatosis type 1 (HFE-related haemochromatosis) is a genetic disorder characterized by excessive intestinal absorption of Human iron metabolism, dietary iron, resulting in a pathological increase in total body iron stores. Huma ...
, whereby the excessive accumulation of iron in tissues culminates in mental and physical deterioration.
[Burwell (1996), 14] Medical records made available in 1991 confirmed that Hemingway had been diagnosed with hemochromatosis in early 1961.
[Burwell (1996), 189] His sister Ursula and his brother
Leicester
Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area, and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest city in the East Midlands with a popula ...
also killed themselves.
Hemingway's health was further complicated by heavy drinking throughout most of his life, which exacerbated his erratic behavior, and his head injuries increased the effects of the alcohol.
[Farah, (2017), 43] The neuropsychiatrist Andrew Farah's 2017 book ''Hemingway's Brain'', offers a forensic examination of Hemingway's mental illness. In her review of Farah's book, Beegel writes that Farah postulates Hemingway suffered from the combination of depression, the side-effects of nine serious concussions, then, she writes, "Add alcohol and stir".
[Beegel, (2017), 122–124] Farah writes that Hemingway's concussions resulted in
chronic traumatic encephalopathy
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated trauma to the head. The encephalopathy symptoms can include behavioral problems, mood problems, and problems with thinking. The disease often gets wor ...
, which eventually led to a form of dementia,
[Farah, (2017), 39–40] most likely
dementia with Lewy bodies
Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is a type of dementia characterized by changes in sleep, behavior change (individual), behavior, cognition, movement, and dysautonomia, regulation of automatic bodily functions. Unlike some other dementias, mem ...
. He bases his hypothesis on Hemingway's symptoms consistent with DLB, such as the various
comorbidities, and most particularly the delusions, which surfaced as early as the late 1940s and were almost overwhelming during the final Ketchum years.
[Farah, (2017), 56] Beegel writes that Farah's study is convincing and "should put an end to future speculation".
Writing style
Following the tradition established by
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...
,
Stephen Crane
Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism an ...
,
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (; August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalism (literature), naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despi ...
, and
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the America ...
, Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist.
''The New York Times'' wrote in 1926 of Hemingway's first novel, "No amount of analysis can convey the quality of ''The Sun Also Rises''. It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame."
''The Sun Also Rises'' is written in the spare, tight prose that made Hemingway famous, and, according to James Nagel, "changed the nature of American writing".
[Nagel (1996), 87]
In 1954, when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was 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."
Henry Louis Gates
Henry may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Henry (given name), including lists of people and fictional characters
* Henry (surname)
* Henry, a stage name of François-Louis Henry (1786–1855), French baritone
Arts and entertainmen ...
believes Hemingway's style was fundamentally shaped "in reaction to
isexperience of world war". After World War I, he and other modernists "lost faith in the central institutions of Western civilization" by reacting against the elaborate style of 19th-century writers and by creating a style "in which meaning is established through dialogue, through action, and silences—a fiction in which nothing crucial—or at least very little—is stated explicitly."
Hemingway's fiction often used grammatical and stylistic structures from languages other than English.
[Josephs (1996), 221–235] Critics Allen Josephs, Mimi Gladstein, and Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera have studied how Spanish influenced Hemingway's prose,
which sometimes appears directly in the other language (in italics, as occurs in ''The Old Man and the Sea'') or in English as literal translations. He also often used bilingual puns and crosslingual wordplay as stylistic devices.
Because he began as a writer of short stories, Baker believes Hemingway learned to "get the most from the least, how to prune language, how to multiply intensities and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth."
[Baker (1972), 117] Hemingway called his style the
iceberg theory: the facts float above water; the supporting structure and symbolism operate out of sight.
The concept of the iceberg theory is sometimes referred to as the "theory of omission". Hemingway believed the writer could describe one thing (such as Nick Adams fishing in "Big Two-Hearted River") though an entirely different thing occurs below the surface (Nick Adams concentrating on fishing to the extent that he does not have to think about anything else).
Paul Smith writes that Hemingway's first stories, collected as ''
In Our Time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
'', showed he was still experimenting with his writing style, and when he wrote about Spain or other countries he incorporated foreign words into the text, which sometimes appears directly in the other language, in italics, as occurs in ''
The Old Man and the Sea
''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiag ...
'', or in English as literal translations. In general, he avoided complicated syntax. About 70 percent of the sentences are
simple sentence
In grammar, sentence and clause structure, commonly known as sentence composition, is the classification of sentences based on the number and kind of clauses in their syntactic structure. Such division is an element of traditional grammar.
Typo ...
s without
subordination—a simple childlike grammar structure.
Jackson Benson believes Hemingway used autobiographical details as framing devices about life in general—not only about his life. For example, Benson postulates that Hemingway used his experiences and drew them out with "what if" scenarios: "what if I were wounded in such a way that I could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to the front?" Writing in "The Art of the Short Story", Hemingway explains: "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit."
The simplicity of the prose is deceptive. Zoe Trodd believes Hemingway crafted skeletal sentences in response to
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
's observation that World War I had "used up words". Hemingway offers a "multi-focal" photographic reality. His iceberg theory of omission is the foundation on which he builds. The syntax, which lacks
subordinating conjunctions
In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses'','' which are called its conjuncts. That description is vague enough to overlap with those of other parts of speech because what constitut ...
, creates static sentences. The photographic "
snapshot
Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to:
* Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation
Computing
* Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time
* Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...
" style creates a
collage
Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...
of images. Many types of internal punctuation (colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses) are omitted in favor of short declarative sentences.
[Trodd (2007), 8]
The sentences build on each other, as events build to create a sense of the whole. Multiple strands exist in one story; an "embedded text" bridges to a different angle. He also uses other cinematic techniques of "cutting" quickly from one scene to the next; or of "splicing" a scene into another. Intentional omissions allow the reader to fill the gap, as though responding to instructions from the author, and create three-dimensional prose.
Conjunctions such as "and" are habitually used in place of commas; a use
polysyndeton
Polysyndeton (from Ancient Greek and ) is the deliberate insertion of conjunctions into a sentence in order to slow the rhythm of the prose so as to produce an impressively solemn note.
In grammar, a polysyndetic coordination is a coordi ...
that conveys immediacy. Hemingway's polysyndetonic sentence—or in later works his use of subordinate clauses—uses conjunctions to juxtapose startling visions and images. Benson compares them to
haiku
is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...
s.
[McCormick, 49]
Many of Hemingway's followers misinterpreted his style and frowned upon expression of emotion;
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...
satirized this style as "Do you have emotions? Strangle them." Hemingway's intent was not to eliminate emotion, but to portray it realistically. As he explains in ''Death in the Afternoon'': "In writing for a newspaper you told what happened ... but the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me". He tried to achieve conveying emotion with collages of images. This use of an image as an
objective correlative is characteristic of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'' and more r ...
. Hemingway's letters refer to Proust's ''
Remembrance of Things Past
''In Search of Lost Time'' (), first translated into English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'', and sometimes referred to in French as ''La Recherche'' (''The Search''), is a novel in seven volumes by French author Marcel Proust. This early twen ...
'' several times over the years, and indicate he read the book at least twice.
[Burwell (1996), 187]
Themes
Hemingway's writing includes themes of love, war, travel, expatriation, wilderness, and loss. Critic
Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Aaron Fiedler (March 8, 1917 – January 29, 2003) was an American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work incorporates the application of psychological theories to American ...
sees the theme he defines as "The Sacred Land"—the
American West
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is census regions United States Census Bureau
As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the mea ...
—extended in Hemingway's work to include mountains in Spain, Switzerland and Africa, and to the streams of Michigan. The American West is given a symbolic nod with the naming of the "Hotel Montana" in ''The Sun Also Rises'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''.
In ''Hemingway's Expatriate Nationalism'', Jeffrey Herlihy describes "Hemingway's Transnational Archetype" as one that involves characters who are "multilingual and bicultural, and have integrated new cultural norms from the host community into their daily lives by the time plots begin."
[Herlihy (2011), 49] In this way, "foreign scenarios, far from being mere exotic backdrops or cosmopolitan milieus, are motivating factors in-character action".
[Herlihy (2011), 3]
In Hemingway's fiction, nature is a place for rebirth and rest; it is where the hunter or fisherman might experience a moment of transcendence at the moment they kill their prey.
Nature is where men exist without women: men fish; men hunt; men find redemption in nature.
Although Hemingway does write about sports, such as fishing, Carlos Baker notes the emphasis is more on the athlete than the sport.
[Baker (1972), 120–121] At its core, much of Hemingway's work can be viewed in the light of American
naturalism, evident in detailed descriptions such as those in "Big Two-Hearted River".
Fiedler believes Hemingway inverts the American literary theme of the evil "Dark Woman" versus the good "Light Woman". The dark woman—Brett Ashley of ''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, following his experimental novel-in-fragments '' In Our Time (short story collection)'' (1925). It portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Par ...
''—is a goddess; the light woman—Margot Macomber of "
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Set in Africa, it was published in the September 1936 issue of ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine. The story was eventually adapted to the screen as the Zoltan Korda film '' ...
"—is a murderess.
[Fiedler (1975), 345–365] Robert Scholes
Robert E. Scholes (1929 – December 9, 2016) was an American literary critic and theorist. He is known for his ideas on fabulation and metafiction.
Education and career
Robert Scholes was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1929. After taking h ...
says early Hemingway stories, such as "
A Very Short Story", present "a male character favorably and a female unfavorably". According to Rena Sanderson, early Hemingway critics lauded his male-centric world of masculine pursuits, and the fiction divided women into "castrators or love-slaves". Feminist critics attacked Hemingway as "public enemy number one", although more recent re-evaluations of his work "have given new visibility to Hemingway's female characters (and their strengths) and have revealed his own sensitivity to gender issues, thus casting doubts on the old assumption that his writings were one-sidedly masculine."
Nina Baym believes that Brett Ashley and Margot Macomber "are the two outstanding examples of Hemingway's 'bitch women.
Death permeates much of Hemingway's work. Young believes the emphasis on death in "Indian Camp" was not so much on the father who kills himself, but on Nick Adams, who witnesses these events and becomes a "badly scarred and nervous young man". Young believes the archetype in "Indian Camp" holds the "master key" to "what its author was up to for some thirty-five years of his writing career". Stoltzfus considers Hemingway's work to be more complex with a representation of the truth inherent in
existentialism
Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and valu ...
: if "nothingness" is embraced, then redemption is achieved at the moment of death. Those who face death with dignity and courage live an authentic life. Francis Macomber dies happy because the last hours of his life are authentic; the
bullfighter
A bullfighter or matador () is a performer in the activity of bullfighting. ''Torero'' () or ''toureiro'' (), both from Latin ''taurarius'', are the Spanish and Portuguese words for bullfighter, and describe all the performers in the activ ...
in the
corrida represents the pinnacle of a life lived with authenticity.
[Stoltzfus (2005), 215–218] In his paper ''The Uses of Authenticity: Hemingway and the Literary Field'', Timo Müller writes that Hemingway's fiction is successful because the characters live an "authentic life", and the "soldiers, fishers, boxers and backwoodsmen are among the archetypes of authenticity in modern literature".
Emasculation is prevalent in Hemingway's work, notably in ''God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen'' and ''The Sun Also Rises''. Emasculation, according to Fiedler, is a result of a generation of wounded soldiers; and of a generation in which women such as Brett gained
emancipation
Emancipation generally means to free a person from a previous restraint or legal disability. More broadly, it is also used for efforts to procure Economic, social and cultural rights, economic and social rights, civil and political rights, po ...
. This also applies to the minor character, Frances Clyne, Cohn's girlfriend in the beginning of ''The Sun Also Rises''. Her character supports the theme not only because the idea was presented early on in the novel but also the impact she had on Cohn in the start of the book while only appearing a small number of times.
In ''God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen'', the emasculation is literal, and related to religious guilt. Baker believes Hemingway's work emphasizes the "natural" versus the "unnatural". In "
An Alpine Idyll" the "unnaturalness" of skiing in the high country late spring snow is juxtaposed against the "unnaturalness" of the peasant who allowed his wife's dead body to linger too long in the shed during the winter. The skiers and peasant retreat to the valley to the "natural" spring for redemption.
In recent decades, critics have characterized Hemingway's work as
misogynistic
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practis ...
and
homophobic
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, Gay men, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred, or ant ...
. Susan Beegel analyzed four decades of Hemingway criticism and found that "critics interested in multiculturalism" simply ignored Hemingway. Typical is this analysis of ''The Sun Also Rises'': "Hemingway never lets the reader forget that Cohn is a Jew, not an unattractive character who happens to be a Jew but a character who is unattractive because he is a Jew." During the same decade, according to Beegel, criticism was published that investigated the "horror of homosexuality" and racism in Hemingway's fiction.
[Beegel (1996), 282] In an overall assessment of Hemingway's work Beegel has written: "Throughout his remarkable body of fiction, he tells the truth about human fear, guilt, betrayal, violence, cruelty, drunkenness, hunger, greed, apathy, ecstasy, tenderness, love and lust."
Influence and legacy

Hemingway's legacy to American literature is his style: writers who came after him either emulated or avoided it. After his reputation was established with the publication of ''The Sun Also Rises'', he became the spokesperson for the post–World War I generation, having established a style to follow.
His books
were burned in Berlin in 1933, "as being a monument of modern decadence", and disavowed by his parents as "filth".
Reynolds asserts the legacy is that "
emingwayleft stories and novels so starkly moving that some have become part of our cultural heritage."
Benson believes the details of Hemingway's life have become a "prime vehicle for exploitation", resulting in a Hemingway industry. The Hemingway scholar believes the "hard-boiled style" and the machismo must be separated from the author himself.
Benson agrees, describing him as introverted and private as
J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger ( ; January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) was an American author best known for his 1951 novel '' The Catcher in the Rye''. Salinger published several short stories in '' Story'' magazine in 1940, before serving in World Wa ...
, although Hemingway masked his nature with braggadocio.
During World War II, Salinger met and corresponded with Hemingway, whom he acknowledged as an influence. In a letter to Hemingway, Salinger claimed their talks "had given him his only hopeful minutes of the entire war" and jokingly "named himself national chairman of the Hemingway Fan Clubs". In 2002, a fossil
billfish
The billfish are a group (Xiphioidea) of saltwater fish, saltwater predatory fish characterised by prominent pointed beak, bills (rostrum (anatomy), rostra), and by their large size; some are longer than . Extant billfish include sailfish and m ...
from the
Danata Formation of
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ash ...
was named ''
Hemingwaya'' after Hemingway, who prominently featured a
marlin
Marlins are fish from the family Istiophoridae, which includes between 9 and 11 species, depending on the taxonomic authority.
Name
The family's common name is thought to derive from their resemblance to a sailor's marlinspike.
Taxonomy
T ...
in ''
The Old Man and the Sea
''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiag ...
''.
Mary Hemingway established the Hemingway Foundation in 1965, and in the 1970s, she donated her husband's papers to the
John F. Kennedy Library. In 1980, a group of Hemingway scholars gathered to assess the donated papers, subsequently forming the Hemingway Society, "committed to supporting and fostering Hemingway scholarship", publishing ''The Hemingway Review''. His granddaughter
Margaux Hemingway
Margaux Louise Hemingway (born Margot Louise Hemingway; February 16, 1954 – July 1, 1996) was an American fashion model and actress. The granddaughter of writer Ernest Hemingway, she gained independent fame as a supermodel in the 1970s, appear ...
was a supermodel and actress and co-starred with her younger sister
Mariel in the 1976 movie ''
Lipstick
Lipstick is a cosmetics, cosmetic product used to apply coloration and texture to lips, often made of wax and oil. Different pigments are used to produce color, and minerals such as silica may be used to provide texture. The use of lipstick ...
''. Her death was later ruled a death by suicide.
Selected works

This is a list of work that Ernest Hemingway published during his lifetime. While much of his later writing was published posthumously, they were finished without his supervision, unlike the works listed below.
* ''
Three Stories and Ten Poems
''Three Stories and Ten Poems'' is a collection of short stories and poems by Ernest Hemingway. It was privately published in 1923 in a run of 300 copies by Robert McAlmon's "Contact Publishing" in Paris.Oliver, Charles. (1999). ''Ernest Heming ...
'' (1923)
* ''
in our time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
'' (1924)
* ''
In Our Time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
'' (1925)
* ''
The Torrents of Spring
''The Torrents of Spring'' is a novella written by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1926. Subtitled "A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race", Hemingway used the work as a spoof of the world of writers. It is Hemingway's first l ...
'' (1926)
* ''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, following his experimental novel-in-fragments '' In Our Time (short story collection)'' (1925). It portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Par ...
'' (1926)
* ''
Men Without Women'' (1927)
* ''
A Farewell to Arms
''A Farewell to Arms'' is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, set during the Italian campaign of World War I. First published in 1929, it is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant () in the a ...
'' (1929)
* ''
Death in the Afternoon
''Death in the Afternoon'' is a non-fiction book written by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understat ...
'' (1932)
* ''
Winner Take Nothing
''Winner Take Nothing'' is a 1933 collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's third and final collection of stories, it was published four years after ''A Farewell to Arms'' (1929), and a year after his non-fiction book about bu ...
'' (1933)
* ''
Green Hills of Africa'' (1935)
* ''
To Have and Have Not'' (1937)
* ''
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories
''The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories'' is an anthology of writings by Ernest Hemingway published by Scribner's on October 14, 1938. It contains Hemingway's only full-length play, ''The Fifth Column'', and 49 short stories.
Many of ...
'' (1938)
*''
For Whom the Bell Tolls
''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned ...
'' (1940)
* ''
Across the River and into the Trees
''Across the River and into the Trees'' is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1950, after first being serialized in ''Cosmopolitan (magazine), Cosmopolitan'' magazine earlier that year. The titl ...
'' (1950)
* ''
The Old Man and the Sea
''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiag ...
'' (1952)
See also
*
Family tree showing Ernest Hemingway's parents, siblings, wives, children and grandchildren
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
*
Baker, Carlos. (1969). ''Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
*
Baker, Carlos. (1972). ''Hemingway: The Writer as Artist''. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...
.
*
Baker, Carlos. (1981). "Introduction" in ''Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917–1961''. New York: Scribner's.
* Banks, Russell. (2004). "PEN/Hemingway Prize Speech". ''The Hemingway Review''. Volume 24, issue 1. 53–60
*
Baym, Nina. (1990). "Actually I Felt Sorry for the Lion", in Benson, Jackson J. (ed.), ''New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway''. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press
Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 ...
.
* Beegel, Susan. (1996). "Conclusion: The Critical Reputation", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York:
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
.
* Beegel, Susan (2000). "Eye and Heart: Hemingway's Education as a Naturalist", in Wagner-Martin, Linda (ed.), ''A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway''. New York:
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
.
* Beegel, Susan. (2017) "Review of Hemingway's Brain, by Andrew Farah". ''The Hemingway Review''. Volume 37, no. 1. 122–127.
* Benson, Jackson. (1989). "Ernest Hemingway: The Life as Fiction and the Fiction as Life". ''American Literature''. Volume 61, issue 3. 354–358
* Benson, Jackson. (1975). ''The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
* Burwell, Rose Marie. (1996). ''Hemingway: the Postwar Years and the Posthumous Novels''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Desnoyers, Megan Floyd
"Ernest Hemingway: A Storyteller's Legacy". John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Online Resources.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Retrieved November 30, 2011.
* Farah, Andrew. (2017). ''Hemingway's Brain''. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
*
Fiedler, Leslie. (1975). ''Love and Death in the American Novel''. New York: Stein and Day.
*
Gladstein, Mimi. (2006). "Bilingual Wordplay: Variations on a Theme by Hemingway and Steinbeck" ''The Hemingway Review'' Volume 26, issue 1. 81–95.
* Griffin, Peter. (1985). ''Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years''. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Hemingway, Ernest. (1929). ''A Farewell to Arms''. New York: Scribner.
* Hemingway, Ernest. (1932). ''Death in the Afternoon''. New York. Scribner.
* Hemingway, Ernest. (1975). "The Art of the Short Story", in Benson, Jackson (ed.), ''New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
*
Hemingway, Leicester. (1996). ''My Brother, Ernest Hemingway''. New York:
World Publishing Company.
* Herlihy, Jeffrey. (2011). ''Hemingway's Expatriate Nationalism''. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
* Hoberek, Andrew. (2005). ''Twilight of the Middle Class: Post World War II fiction and White Collar Work''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
*
Hotchner, A. E. (1983). ''Papa Hemingway: A personal Memoir''. New York: Morrow.
* Hutchisson, James M. (2016). ''Ernest Hemingway: A New Life''.
Penn State University Press
The Penn State University Press, also known as The Pennsylvania State University Press, is a non-profit publisher of scholarly books and journals. Established in 1956, it is the independent publishing branch of the Pennsylvania State University ...
.
* Josephs, Allen. (1996). "Hemingway's Spanish Sensibility", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Kert, Bernice. (1983). ''The Hemingway Women''. New York: Norton.
*
Koch, Stephen. (2005). ''The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles''. New York: Counterpoint.
*
Long, Ray – editor. (1932). "Why Editors Go Wrong: '
Fifty Grand' by Ernest Hemingway", ''20 Best Stories in Ray Long's 20 Years as an Editor''. New York: Crown Publishers. 1–3
*
Lynn, Kenneth. (1987). ''Hemingway''. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou.
The pres ...
.
* McCormick, John (1971). ''American Literature 1919–1932''. London:
Routledge
Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...
.
*
Mellow, James. (1992). ''Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences''. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as ...
.
*
Mellow, James. (1991). ''Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
*
Meyers, Jeffrey. (1985). ''Hemingway: A Biography''. New York: Macmillan.
* Meyers, Jeffrey. (2020). "Gregory Hemingway: Transgender Tragedy". ''American Imago'', Volume 77, issue 2. 395–417
* Miller, Linda Patterson. (2006). "From the African Book to Under Kilimanjaro". ''The Hemingway Review'', Volume 25, issue 2. 78–81
* Muller, Gilbert. (2019). ''Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War''.
Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains offi ...
.
* Müller, Timo. (2010). "The Uses of Authenticity: Hemingway and the Literary Field, 1926–1936". ''Journal of Modern Literature''. Volume 33, issue 1. 28–42
* Nagel, James. (1996). "Brett and the Other Women in ''The Sun Also Rises''", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Oliver, Charles. (1999). ''Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work''. New York: Checkmark Publishing.
*
Pizer, Donald. (1986). "The Hemingway: Dos Passos Relationship". ''Journal of Modern Literature''. Volume 13, issue 1. 111–128
*
Reynolds, Michael (2000). "Ernest Hemingway, 1899–1961: A Brief Biography", in Wagner-Martin, Linda (ed.), ''A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Reynolds, Michael. (1999). ''Hemingway: The Final Years''. New York: Norton.
* Reynolds, Michael. (1989). ''Hemingway: The Paris Years''. New York: Norton.
* Reynolds, Michael. (1998). ''The Young Hemingway''. New York: Norton.
* Reynolds, Michael. (2012). ''Hemingway: The 1930s through the final years''. New York: Norton.
* Robinson, Daniel. (2005). "My True Occupation is That of a Writer: Hemingway's Passport Correspondence". ''The Hemingway Review''. Volume 24, issue 2. 87–93
* Sanderson, Rena. (1996). "Hemingway and Gender History", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Scholes, Robert. (1990). "New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway", in Benson, Jackson J., ''Decoding Papa: 'A Very Short Story' as Work and Text''. 33–47. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
* Smith, Paul (1996). "1924: Hemingway's Luggage and the Miraculous Year", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Spanier, Sandra (ed.) et al. (2024), "The Letters of Ernest Hemingway Vol. 6 1934-1936." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Stoltzfus, Ben. (2005). "Sartre, 'Nada,' and Hemingway's African Stories". ''Comparative Literature Studies''. Volume 42, issue 3. 205–228
* Svoboda, Frederic. (2000). "The Great Themes in Hemingway", in Wagner-Martin, Linda (ed.), ''A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Thomas, Hugh. (2001). ''The Spanish Civil War''. New York: Modern Library.
* Trodd, Zoe. (2007). "Hemingway's Camera Eye: The Problems of Language and an Interwar Politics of Form". ''The Hemingway Review''. Volume 26, issue 2. 7–21
* Trogdon, Robert W. "Forms of Combat: Hemingway, the Critics and Green Hills of Africa". ''The Hemingway Review''. Volume 15, issue 2. 1–14
* Wells, Elizabeth J. (1975). "A Statistical Analysis of the Prose Style of Ernest Hemingway: ''Big Two-Hearted River''", in Benson, Jackson (ed.), ''The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
* Young, Philip. (1964). ''Ernest Hemingway''. St. Paul, MN: University of Minnesota.
External links
Digital collections
*
*
*
*
*
Physical collections
Ernest Hemingway Collectionat the
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
Ernest Hemingway collectionat the
University of Maryland Libraries
The University of Maryland Libraries is the largest university library system in the Washington D.C.–Baltimore area. The system includes eight libraries: six are located on the University of Maryland, College Park, College Park campus, while ...
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Ernest Hemingway Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Ernest Hemingway's Collectionat
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 2 ...
Finding aid to Adele C. Brockhoff letters, including Hemingway correspondence, at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.Hemingway legal files collection, 1899–1971Manuscripts and Archives, New York Public Library.
Maurice J. Speiser papers at the University of South Carolina Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
Journalism
"The Art of Fiction No. 21" ''The Paris Review''. Spring 1958.
at The Archive of American Journalism
Biographical and other information
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FBI Records: The Vault, Subject: Ernest Hemingway
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hemingway, Ernest
1899 births
1961 deaths
1961 suicides
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