Ernest Hemingway

Novelist, Author

1899 – 1961

 Credit »
68

Who was Ernest Hemingway?

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of these are considered classics of American literature.

Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. 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. The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first novel, was published in 1926.

Famous Quotes:

  • For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try…
  • The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places…
  • Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
  • The age demanded that we dance and jammed us into iron pants. And in the end the age was handed the sort of shit that it demanded.
  • Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
  • Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
  • I know now that there is no one thing that is true -- it is all true.
  • The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.
  • I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.
  • All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

We need you!

Help us build the largest biographies collection on the web!

Born
Jul 21, 1899
Oak Park
Also known as
  • "Papa" Hemingway
  • Ernest Hemmingway
  • Ernest Miller Hemingway
  • Hemingway
  • ernest_hemingway
  • Hemingway, Ernest
  • E. Hemingway
  • Ernest Hemingway's
  • Papa
Parents
Siblings
Spouses
Children
Religion
  • Catholicism
  • Atheism
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession
Education
  • Oak Park and River Forest High School
    (1913 - 1917)
Employment
  • Toronto Star
    (1920 - 1924/01/01)
  • The McClatchy Company
    (1917/10/17 - 1918/04/30)
Lived in
  • Chicago
    (1920 - 1921)
  • Toronto
    (1920 - )
  • Key West
  • Paris
    (1922 - )
  • Oak Park
Died
Jul 2, 1961
Ketchum

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

Use the citation below to add to a bibliography:

Style:MLAChicagoAPA

"Ernest Hemingway." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/ernest_hemingway>.

Discuss this Ernest Hemingway biography with the community:

0 Comments

    Browse Biographies.net