Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961

Variant names
Dates:
Birth 1899-07-21
Death 1961-07-02
Americans
English

Biographical notes:

Born in 1899, Ernest Hemingway was the second of six children born to Grace Hall and Clarence Edmonds Hemingway. Ernest developed a love of literature and music from his mother, a trained opera singer and music teacher after her marriage, and gained a keen interest in outdoor sports--hunting, fishing, woodscraft--from his father, a doctor and avid naturalist. Divided between the family's home in Oak Park, Illinois, and their summer cottage on Lake Waldoon in Michigan, Ernest's childhood was happy and free from any peculiar traumas or catastrophes.

Hemingway graduated from high school in 1917, two months after the outbreak of World War I. Unable to join the military due to poor eyesight, and not wishing to follow his parent's advice to attend Oberlin, he obtained a job as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star newspaper. While in Kansas City he discovered a way to join the war effort and in 1918 he sailed for Paris as an ambulance driver.

Arriving in early June, Hemingway was stationed in Italy where on July 8, at Fossalta di Piave, the Italian troops to whom he was delivering chocolate and cigarettes came under shell fire. While accounts of Hemingway's actions and injuries vary, he received a number of severe wounds and spent over nine months in the new Red Cross Hospital in Milan recovering.

Hemingway spent the better part of the next year living at home and writing but in 1920 had a falling out with his parents. He moved to Chicago where he took a newspaper job and moved into an apartment with another bachelor. At a party he met Hadley Richardson whom he married in 1921. Shortly after the wedding the couple moved to Paris.

Over the next five years, Hemingway wrote and traveled. He developed a strong working relationship with Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, both of whom strongly influenced his writing and gave him advice, help, and support. Visiting Pamplona at Stein's suggestion he developed his life-long fascination with bull-fighting and the matadors who perform the ritualistic sport. He met and became friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gerald Murphy. He also published his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, a volume of short stories, in 1923, and celebrated the birth of his first child, a son, in the same year.

Back in Paris in 1926 Hemingway met and fell in love with Pauline Pfeiffer, an heiress and occasional writer for Vogue. Hadley agreed to a divorce later that year and in May 1927, Hemingway married Pauline. During this period Hemingway published two major works, The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Men Without Women (1927), which brought him critical acclaim in America as well as Europe and established him as a serious writer.

Hemingway and Pauline returned to the United States in 1928 to visit her family and vacation in Key West. Pauline survived a difficult birth to present Hemingway with his second son late in the summer. This joyful news was offset later in the year by the suicide of Hemingway's father. Pouring his emotional turmoil into his work, Hemingway completed the novel he had been working on, and early in 1929 published A Farewell to Arms, which rocketed him to celebrity status.

Along with fame, Hemingway acquired wealth, which he used to purchase a home in Key West and a boat, the Pilar. He and Pauline also went on safari in Africa which inspired several stories including The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936). He spent time in Europe in 1937 and 1938 covering the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. While on this assignment he met fellow journalist Martha Gelhorn whom he married in 1940. Lasting only four years, a great deal of Hemingway's third marriage was spent covering World War II and competing with Martha for assignments and glory.

By 1944 Hemingway had had enough of war. He returned to his home in Cuba and waited for Mary Welsh, whom he had met in Paris, to complete her divorce proceedings and join him. They were married in 1946 in Havana. Hemingway continued to write, but the late 1940s contained a long series of misfortunes for him and his family.

The publication of The Old Man and the Sea (1952) marked the end of Hemingway's active writing life. Though he produced a number of short stories, his heavy drinking and declining physical and mental health took its toll on the quality of his work. Following a grueling summer traveling in Spain following the 1959 bull fight season, he entered the Mayo Clinic in November 1960 where he received a diagnosis of diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, and depression. He was discharged in January of 1961, but readmitted in April of the same year. He left the hospital in June, returning to his home in Ketchum, Idaho, where on July 2, 1961, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

From the guide to the Ernest Hemingway Collection TXRC99-A18., 1860-1965, (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin)

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Subjects:

  • American literature
  • American literature
  • American literature
  • Authors, American
  • American drama
  • American fiction
  • Novelists, American
  • Novelists, American
  • American periodicals
  • Ardennes, Battle of the, 1944-1945
  • Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
  • Authors
  • Authors and publishers
  • Baseball
  • Big game hunting
  • Biography as a literary form
  • Boxing
  • Bullfights
  • Cockfighting
  • Correspondence
  • Fishing
  • Hemingway, Ernest
  • Hemingway Family
  • Hunting
  • Income averaging
  • Income tax
  • Korean War, 1950-1953
  • Lawyers
  • Literature
  • Male authors, American
  • Marlin fishing
  • Material Types
  • Presidents
  • Privacy, Right of
  • Safaries
  • Safaris
  • Sailing
  • World War, 1914-1918
  • World War, 1939-1945
  • American literature
  • American literature
  • Novelists, American

Occupations:

  • War correspondents
  • Novelists, American
  • Novelists, American
  • Authors
  • Journalists
  • Novelists, American

Places:

  • Kenya (as recorded)
  • Kenya (as recorded)
  • Italy (as recorded)
  • Italy (as recorded)
  • Cuba (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)
  • Siegfried Line (Germany) (as recorded)
  • Siegfried Line (Germany) (as recorded)
  • Montana (as recorded)
  • Montana (as recorded)
  • Montana (as recorded)
  • France (as recorded)
  • Walloon Lake (Mich.) (as recorded)
  • Gulf stream (as recorded)
  • Idaho (as recorded)
  • Seney (Mich.) (as recorded)
  • Kenya (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Siegfried Line (Germany) (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • Italy (as recorded)
  • Montana (as recorded)
  • Montana (as recorded)
  • Spain (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)

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