Ernest Hemingway
Who was Ernest Hemingway?
American author and journalist (1899–1961)
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Ernest Hemingway (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago. He attended Oak Park and River Forest High School, where he wrote for the school newspaper and discovered his love for language and storytelling. After graduating in 1917, he worked as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star, where the newsroom's style guide—focusing on short sentences and active verbs—shaped his writing style. He left after six months to volunteer for World War I, serving as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross on the Italian Front. In 1918, he was badly injured by mortar shrapnel near Fossalta di Piave and spent months recovering in a Milan hospital. This experience left lasting physical and psychological scars and became the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms.
Before Fame
Hemingway grew up in a home that encouraged both curiosity and outdoor activities. His father, a doctor, got him into hunting and fishing in the woods and lakes of northern Michigan, experiences that would show up in his fiction. His mother fostered his love for music and the arts. After being wounded in Italy during World War I, he came back to North America unsure of what to do next, working briefly for a Toronto newspaper before moving to Paris in 1921 with his first wife, Hadley Richardson. In Paris, he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and got involved in the expatriate literary scene with people like Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. These connections and his journalism experience helped him develop the simple, direct style that marked his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, which was published in 1926 and quickly gained attention from critics.
Key Achievements
- Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 for his mastery of narrative art and influence on contemporary style
- Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea
- Published A Farewell to Arms (1929) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), both recognized as major works of 20th-century American fiction
- Developed an economical prose style that reshaped literary fiction and influenced generations of subsequent writers
- Received the Bronze Star Medal in 1947 for his courageous conduct as a war correspondent during World War II
Did You Know?
- 01.Hemingway was wounded on the Italian Front in July 1918 and reportedly carried an injured Italian soldier to safety despite his own injuries, an act of courage that contributed to his receiving the Medal of Military Valour from the Italian government.
- 02.He survived two separate plane crashes in Africa in January 1954 within two days of each other, and some obituaries were prematurely published around the world—he reportedly read them while recovering.
- 03.Hemingway was married four times: to Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer, Martha Gellhorn, and Mary Welsh Hemingway, and each marriage largely corresponded to a distinct chapter of his geographic and creative life.
- 04.During World War II, Hemingway outfitted his fishing boat, the Pilar, with radio equipment and weapons and conducted informal anti-submarine patrols in the Caribbean on behalf of the U.S. government.
- 05.His novel The Old Man and the Sea, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and contributed directly to his 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, was initially published in a single issue of Life magazine, selling over five million copies within two days.
Family & Personal Life
Awards & Honors
| Award | Year | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Nobel Prize in Literature | 1954 | for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in <I>The Old Man and the Sea,</I> and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style |
| Bronze Star Medal | 1947 | — |
| Pulitzer Prize for Fiction | 1953 | — |
| Florida Artists Hall of Fame | 1987 | — |
| National Order of Merit Carlos Manuel de Céspedes | 1954 | — |
| Medal of Military Valour | 1917 | — |
| Commemorative Medal for the Italo-Austrian War 1915-1918 | — | — |
| Bancarella Literary Prize | 1953 | — |
Nobel Prizes
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Nobel Prizes in 1954
All Nobel Prize winners from 1954.