Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up as the second of six children to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway and Grace Hall Hemingway. His father worked as a physician while his mother taught music. The family lived with Grace's father after her parents married in 1896. They named their first son Ernest Miller after him.
Grace followed Victorian conventions regarding clothing for young children. She kept Ernest's hair long during his first three years. She dressed both Ernest and his sister Marcelline in similar frilly feminine outfits. This made them appear like twins despite being only a year apart in age. Later in life, Hemingway professed to hate his mother even though they shared enthusiastic energies.
His father taught him woodcraft during summer trips to Windemere on Walloon Lake near Petoskey, Michigan. These excursions instilled a lifelong passion for outdoor adventure. He learned to hunt fish and camp in the woods and lakes of Northern Michigan. At Oak Park and River Forest High School between 1913 and 1917 he competed in boxing track field water polo and football.
He edited the school newspaper and yearbook during his last two years at high school. He contributed under the pen name Ring Lardner Jr. After leaving school he worked for The Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. The paper's style guide stated use short sentences and vigorous English. This became a foundation for his prose.
Hemingway tried to enlist in the U.S. Army but was rejected due to poor eyesight. He volunteered with the American Red Cross Motor Corps in December 1917. In May 1918 he sailed from New York arriving in Paris while it faced bombardment from German artillery. That June he reached the Italian Front as a volunteer with the A.R.C.
On his first day in Milan he joined rescuers retrieving shredded remains of female workers after a munitions factory explosion. He described collecting fragments of the dead in his 1932 non-fiction book Death in the Afternoon. A few days later on the 8th of July 1918, he was stationed at Fossalta di Piave. While bringing chocolate and cigarettes to men at the front line mortar fire struck their group.
Hemingway sustained severe shrapnel wounds to both legs. Despite his injuries he assisted Italian soldiers to safety before taking care of himself. He received the Italian War Merit Cross and the Italian Silver Medal of Military Valor. Contemporary documents sometimes called him second lieutenant or sottotenente though he held no commissioned officer rank in the United States Army.
He spent five days at a field hospital before being transferred to the Red Cross hospital in Milan for recuperation. During six months there he met Chink Dorman-Smith who became a strong friend lasting decades. He fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky a Red Cross nurse seven years his senior. When he returned to the United States in January 1919 she wrote to say she was engaged to an Italian officer.
In 1921 Hemingway moved to Paris working as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. He lived with Hadley Richardson in a small walk-up at 74 in the Latin Quarter. Gertrude Stein became his mentor and godmother to his son Jack. She introduced him to expatriate artists and writers of the Montparnasse Quarter whom she called the Lost Generation.
Hemingway met Pablo Picasso Joan Miró Juan Gris and Luis Quintanilla through Stein's salon. Ezra Pound forged a strong friendship with him after meeting by chance in 1922 at Sylvia Beach's bookstore Shakespeare and Company. They visited Italy together in 1923 living on the same street in 1924. Pound introduced Hemingway to James Joyce with whom he frequently embarked on alcoholic sprees.
During his first 20 months in Paris he filed 88 stories for the Toronto Star newspaper. He covered the Greco-Turkish War witnessing the burning of Smyrna. In December 1922 Hadley lost a suitcase filled with his manuscripts at the train station Gare de Lyon. Nine months later their son John Hadley Nicanor was born on the 10th of October 1923.
His first book Three Stories and Ten Poems was published in Paris while they were away. All that remained after the loss of the suitcase were two of the stories. The small volume included 18 vignettes a dozen of which he wrote during his first visit to Spain where he discovered the thrill of the corrida.
Hemingway returned to Paris in January 1924 moving into an apartment on rue Notre-Dame des Champs. He helped Ford Madox Ford edit The Transatlantic Review publishing works by Pound Dos Passos Stein and some of his own early stories like Indian Camp. His first collection of stories In Our Time was published in 1925 receiving considerable praise from critics in the United States.
Six months earlier he had met F. Scott Fitzgerald forming a friendship of admiration and hostility. Fitzgerald had published The Great Gatsby the same year. Hemingway read it liked it and decided his next work had to be a novel. The year before he visited the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona becoming fascinated by bullfighting.
On the 21st of July 1926, eight weeks after beginning the draft he finished writing what would become The Sun Also Rises. The manuscript arrived in New York in April with final proofs corrected in August. Scribner's published the novel in October. It epitomized the post-war expatriate generation receiving good reviews and recognized as Hemingway's greatest work.
His marriage to Hadley deteriorated during this period. In November 1927 they divorced and he married Pauline Pfeiffer in May. Before that conversion to Catholicism occurred. They honeymooned in Le Grau-du-Roi where he contracted anthrax planning his next collection Men Without Women published in October 1927.
Hemingway spent winters in Key West and summers in Wyoming hunting deer elk and grizzly bear. He joined there by Dos Passos. In November 1930 after taking him to the train station in Billings Montana he broke his arm in a car accident. He was hospitalized for seven weeks while nerves in his writing hand took a year to heal causing intense pain.
In 1933 he went on safari to Kenya providing material for Green Hills of Africa and short stories like The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Their guide Philip Percival had guided Theodore Roosevelt on his 1909 safari. During these travels he contracted amoebic dysentery causing a prolapsed intestine evacuated by plane to Nairobi reflecting in The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
He purchased a boat named the Pilar in 1934 sailing the Caribbean arriving at Bimini in 1935. To Have and Have Not became the only novel he wrote during the 1930s published in 1937 while he was in Spain. He vehemently criticized the administration's handling of the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 writing an expose for New Masses titled Who Murdered the Vets?
From 1937 Hemingway covered the Spanish Civil War signing with North American Newspaper Alliance. He sailed from New York on the 27th of February 1937 accompanied by Martha Gellhorn who met him in Key West a year earlier. In March he arrived in Spain with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens filming The Spanish Earth.
In January 1954 while in Africa Hemingway was almost fatally injured in successive plane crashes. He chartered a sightseeing flight over the Belgian Congo as a Christmas present to Mary. On their way to photograph Murchison Falls the plane struck an abandoned utility pole forced into a crash landing. He sustained injuries to his back and shoulder while Mary broke ribs going into shock.
After a night in the brush they chartered a boat arriving in Butiaba where a pilot searched for them. The landing strip was too rough causing the plane to explode in flames. Mary and the pilot escaped through a broken window. Hemingway had to smash his way out battering the door open with his head suffering burns and another serious head injury causing cerebral fluid to leak.
Months later in Venice Mary reported two cracked discs kidney and liver rupture dislocated shoulder and broken skull. Despite these injuries he accompanied Patrick and his wife on a planned fishing expedition in February but pain made him irascible difficult to get along with. When a bushfire broke out he sustained second-degree burns on legs front torso lips left hand and right forearm.
The accidents may have precipitated physical deterioration following. After the plane crashes Hemingway drank more heavily than usual to combat pain of injuries. He became thinly controlled alcoholic throughout much of life drinking more heavily after injuries.
In October 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He modestly told press that Carl Sandburg Isak Dinesen and Bernard Berenson deserved prize gladly accepting money. Mellow says Hemingway coveted the prize months after plane accidents and worldwide press coverage suggesting lingering suspicion obituary notices played part academy's decision.
He was still recuperating deciding against traveling to Stockholm sending speech defining writer's life. Late in 1955 early into 1956 bedridden with variety illnesses ordered stop drinking mitigate liver damage initially followed eventually disregarded. In November 1956 while staying Paris reminded of trunks stored Ritz Hotel 1928 never retrieved discovering notebooks writing from Paris years excited began shape recovered work memoir A Moveable Feast.
In 1959 ended period intense activity finishing A Moveable Feast True at First Light adding chapters Garden Eden working Islands Stream last three stored safe deposit box Havana focusing finishing touches A Moveable Feast. Reynolds claims during this period slid depression unable recover. Finca Vigía crowded guests tourists considered permanent move Idaho buying home overlooking Big Wood River outside Ketchum leaving Cuba.
After leaving Cuba Sun Valley continued reworking material published as A Moveable Feast through 1950s. Mid-1959 visited Spain researching bullfighting articles commissioned Life magazine wanting only 10,000 words manuscript grew out control asked A.E. Hotchner travel Cuba help trim piece down 40,000 words Scribner's agreed full-length book version Dangerous Summer almost 130,000 words.
Hotchner found Hemingway unusually hesitant disorganized confused suffering badly failing eyesight. He left Cuba last time the 25th of July 1960 Mary went New York set small office attempted unsuccessfully work. Soon after left New York traveling without Mary to Spain photographed front cover Life magazine days later news reported seriously ill verge dying panicked Mary until received cable Reports false Enroute Madrid Love Papa.
In October returned New York refused leave Mary's apartment presuming watched quickly took Idaho met train station Ketchum local physician George Saviers concerned finances missed Cuba books life fretted never return retrieve manuscripts left bank vault believed manuscripts Islands Stream True at First Light lost became paranoid FBI actively monitoring movements Ketchum.
At end November Saviers flew Mayo Clinic Minnesota pretext treated hypertension checked under Saviers name maintain anonymity. Meyers writes aura secrecy surrounds treatment confirms treated electroconvulsive therapy ECT as many 15 times December 1960. Doctors Rochester told depressive state caused long-term use Reserpine Ritalin. In late January 1961 sent home ruins.
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Common questions
When and where was Ernest Hemingway born?
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up as the second of six children to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway and Grace Hall Hemingway.
What happened to Ernest Hemingway during World War I?
Hemingway sustained severe shrapnel wounds to both legs while serving with the American Red Cross Motor Corps on the Italian Front on the 8th of July 1918. He received the Italian War Merit Cross and the Italian Silver Medal of Military Valor for his actions despite having no commissioned officer rank.
Which novels did Ernest Hemingway publish in Paris between 1925 and 1927?
His first collection of stories In Our Time was published in 1925 receiving considerable praise from critics in the United States. The Sun Also Rises arrived in New York in April 1926 and was published by Scribner's in October 1926. Men Without Women was published in October 1927 after he contracted anthrax during a honeymoon in Le Grau-du-Roi.
How were Ernest Hemingway's injuries in Africa treated in 1954?
Ernest Hemingway sustained injuries to his back shoulder and head when his plane struck an abandoned utility pole over the Belgian Congo on Christmas Day 1953. Mary reported two cracked discs kidney and liver rupture dislocated shoulder and broken skull months later in Venice.
When did Ernest Hemingway receive the Nobel Prize in Literature?
In October 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature while still recuperating from severe injuries sustained in African plane crashes. He decided against traveling to Stockholm sending speech defining writer's life instead.