Ernest Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, and died on the 2nd of July 1961. Ernest was the second of six children to be raised in the quiet suburban town. His father was a physician, and both parents were devoted Christians. After high school, young Hemingway did not want to go to college. Instead, at aged eighteen, he opted for a writing career as a junior reporter for The Kansas City Star.
However, after only a few months in the role he tried to join the army. He failed the medical examination due to poor vision, and instead joined the Red Cross towards the end of World War I in 1918.
During the twenties; Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926).
Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer’s disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. He was a famous author and journalist; he published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works.
Additional works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
In 1921, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives. The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s “Lost Generation” expatriate community.
He published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises in 1926. After his 1927 divorce from Hadley Richardson, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer; they divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War where he had been a journalist, and after which he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
In 1922, Hadley lost a piece of luggage containing Hemingway’s manuscripts. The author was distraught over this event. The couple crossed the Atlantic to move to Toronto. In 1923, Hemingway’s first child, John Hadley Nicanor, was born.
Three Stories and Ten Poems were published. Hemingway tired of Toronto and returned his family to Paris.
In June 1928, Hemingway and his second wife had a son in Kansas City. After Pauline gave birth, Hemingway and his family travelled to Wyoming, Massachusetts and New York. In the fall, Hemingway discovered that his father had committed suicide.
He began to have premonitions that he would end his life by his own hand. Throughout the 1930s, Hemingway would spend his winters in Key West, Florida. This region would become associated with Hemingway.
For the second half of 1944, Hemingway travelled to the European front of the Second World War. He was at the D-Day landing; however, he was protected as “precious cargo.”
However, some doubt the validity of the assertions that he went ashore during the Allied invasion. During the conflict, Hemingway broke the Geneva Convention by leading an armed group of military resistors. As a journalist, he was expressly forbidden to engage in military action.
Hemingway’s own life and character are as fascinating as in any of his stories. On one level, Papa was a legendary adventurer who enjoyed his flamboyant lifestyle and celebrity status.
However, deep inside lived a disciplined author who worked tirelessly in pursuit of literary perfection. His overall achievement as a writer was acknowledged when he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.