Ernest Hemingway Biography

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Cicero, now in Oak Park, Illinois. He was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. He was noted both for his exploration of masculinity in his writing and also for his adventurous public life. His succinct, economic, and lucid prose style—which he termed the “iceberg theory”—had a strong influence on 20th-century British and American fiction. His works are considered classics of American literature that include seven published novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.

Hemingway married Hadley Richardson in 1921. She was the first of four wives. The couple moved to Paris where Hemingway worked as a foreign correspondent for Toronto Star. It was during this time that he was influenced by modernist writers and artists, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound of the “Lost Generation” expatriate community of 1920s. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s debut novel, was published in 1926. In 1927, he divorced Hadley Richardson and married Pauline Pfeiffer. Hemingway divorced Pauline after he returned from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), which was the basis for his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. In 1940, he married Martha Gellhorn. During World War II, he met Mary Welsh in London that led to his separation with Gellhorn. Hemingway was present as a journalist with the Allied troops at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. In the 1930s, Hemingway had his permanent residence in Key West, Florida, and later in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On July 2, 1961, he killed himself with a shotgun in Ketchum, Idaho.