Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist, short story author, reporter, and sportsman whose spare, understated writing style, which he termed the “iceberg theory,” had a profound influence on 20th century fiction. But beyond his literary legacy, Hemingway’s adventurous lifestyle and public persona made him an idol of younger generations. He authored most of his classic works between the mid-1920s and 1950s, earning the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. His oeuvre includes seven novels, six short story collections, and two nonfiction books, with additional works published posthumously. Many of his writings are considered masterpieces of American literature.
Born in suburban Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway worked briefly as a reporter for The Kansas City Star after high school before enlisting to drive ambulances on the Italian front in World War I. Severely wounded in 1918, he returned home traumatized. His combat experiences provided material for his breakthrough 1929 novel, A Farewell to Arms.
In 1921 Hemingway married his first wife Hadley Richardson. They relocated to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent and fell in with the modernist “Lost Generation” writers and artists. This expatriate milieu inspired his first novel The Sun Also Rises, released in 1926. After divorcing Richardson in 1927, Hemingway wed his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. Following the Spanish Civil War, which he covered as a journalist and informed his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Pfeiffer and Hemingway divorced in 1940. He next married fellow writer Martha Gellhorn, later leaving her for Mary Welsh who he met in London during World War II. As a journalist, Hemingway witnessed the D-Day invasion and liberation of Paris.
