Ernest Hemingway

American novelist and short story writer

Date of Birth	:	21 Jul, 1899
Date of Death	:	02 Jul, 1961
Place of Birth	:	Oak Park, Illinois, United States
Profession	:	American Novelist And Short Story Writer
Nationality	:	American

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Best known for an austere, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's work was published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short story collections, and two works of non-fiction. His writings have become classics of American literature; He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, when three of his novels, four collections of short stories, and three works of non-fiction were published posthumously.

Hemingway grew up in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis of his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and was influenced by the modernist writers and artists of the "Lost Generation" diaspora of the 1920s. His first novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.

He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Phifer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel The Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after meeting Mary Welsh in London during World War II. Hemingway was present as a journalist with the Allied forces during the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He lived in Key West, Florida in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a tour of Africa in 1954, he was seriously injured in two consecutive plane crashes, causing him to suffer pain and illness for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where he died by suicide in mid-1961.

Life and career

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, an affluent suburb just west of Chicago, to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a physician, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a musician. His parents were well-educated and well-respected in Oak Park, a conservative community whose resident Frank Lloyd Wright 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. She was predeceased by her sisters Marceline in 1898, Ursula in 1902, Madeleine in 1904, Carol in 1911 and Lester in 1915. Grace followed the Victorian convention of not distinguishing children's clothing by gender. With only a year separating the two, Ernest and Marceline strongly resemble each other. Grace wanted them to appear as twins, so during Ernest's first three years she grew her hair long and dressed both children in identical feminine clothing.

Hemingway's mother was a well-known local musician, who taught her reluctant son to play the cello; He later said that music lessons contributed to his writing style, as evidenced by the "contrapuntal structure" of "For Whom the Bell Tolls". As an adult Hemingway claimed to hate his mother, even though they shared a similar passionate energy. Every summer the family traveled to Windemere on Walloon Lake near Petoskey, Michigan. Ernest joined his father and learned to hunt, fish and camp in the forests and lakes of northern Michigan, early experiences that sparked a lifelong passion for outdoor adventure and living in remote or isolated areas.

He attended Oak Park and River Forest High Schools in Oak Park between 1913 and 1917. He was an accomplished athlete and competed in boxing, track and field, water polo and football. He performed in the school orchestra for two years with his sister Marceline and received good grades in English class. His last two years in high school he edited Trapeze and Tabula (the school newspaper and yearbook), where he imitated the language of sportswriters and used the name Ring Lardner Jr.—Ring Lardner of the Chicago Tribune with the byline "Line O'Type." Like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist. After leaving high school, he went to work as a Cubs reporter for the Kansas City Star. Although he only stayed there for six months, he relied on Starr's style guide as a basis for his writing, such as "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use strong English. Be positive, not negative.