Hemingway was born inn Oak Park, Illinois. His mother Grace Hall had a operatic career before marrying Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, who took his own life in 1928. Hemingway attended the public schools in Oak Park and published his earliest stories and poems in his high school newspaper.

Upon his graduation in 1917 Hemingway worked six months as a reporter for The Kansas City Star and joined then volunteer ambulance unit in Italy durin World War I. In 1918 he suffered a severe leg wound and was twice decorated by the Italian government. His affair with an American nurse gave later basis for the novel A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1929).

After the war Hemingway worked for a short time as a journalist in Chicago. He moved in 1921 to Paris, wrote articles for the Toronto Star and associated with such writers as Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald. His first books, THREE STORIES AND TEN POEMS (1923) and IN OUR TIME (1924), were published in Paris. THE TORRENTS OF SPRING appeared in 1926 and Hemingway's first serious novel, THE SUN ALSO RISES, on the same year. After the publication of MEN WITHOUT WOMEN (1927) Hemingway returned to the United States, settling in Key West, Florida. There he wrote A Farewell toArms, which gained enormous critical and commercial success.

In 1930s Hemingway wrote such major works as DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON (1932), a nonfiction account of Spanish bullfighting, THE GREEN HILL OF AFRICA (1935), a story of a hunting safari in East Africa, and TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT (1937), which was made into film by Howard Hawks. In 1937 Hemingway observed the Spanish Civil war firsthand and met in Madrid Martha Gellhorn (see further below), a war correspondent, with whom Hemingway had a romance.

In 1940 Hemingway bought Finca Vigia, a house outside Havana, Cuba and armed his fishing boat Pilar, forming an intelligence network to monitor Nazi activities in that area. When his marriage ended with Martha Gellhorn, his third wife, Hemingway followed in 1944 allied campaigns in Europe, taking part in the D-Day landings. He returned to Cuba in 1946, married Mary Welsh, a correspondent for Time magazine.

Hemingway lived in Cuba until the 1960 revolution, when he moved to the United States. His later works in the 1950s include ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES (1950), and THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, published first in Life magazine in 1952.

In 1960 Hemingway was hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for treatment of depression, and released in 1961. On July 2 Hemingway committed suicide by shooting himself at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

Several of Hemingway's novels have been published posthumously. TRUE AT FIRST LIGHT, depiction of an African safari, will appear in July 1999.

Hemingway's obsession with war, big-game hunting, and bullfighting is seen in his masterworks A FAREWELL IN ARMS, DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS and THE OLD MAN AND THE SEE.

SEE ALSO: Sherwood Anderson

WRITERS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR: Federico Garcia Lorca, George Orwell, André Malraux, Langston Hughes.

NOTE: Ava Gardner played in three Hemingway films: The Killers, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Sun Also Rises - se become also friend of the writer and aficionada of bullfighting.

For further reading: Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story by C. Baker (1969); My Brother, Ernest Hemingway by L. Hemingway (1962); Hemingway, Life and Works by G.B. Nelson and G. Jones (1985); Hemingway by Kenneth Lynn (1987); The Hemingway Women by B. Kert (1983)

MARTHA GELLHORN (1908-1998)

Ernest Heminway's third wife was journalist, short story writer and novelist Martha Gellhorn.

Gellhorn was born in St. Louis as a daughter of a physician. She studied at Bryn Mawrin College and started he writing career as a journalist at The New Republic. In the 1930s Gellhorn travelled around the United States and wrote articles depicting effects of Depression Years on peoples' everyday life. In 1937 she went to Spain to write to Collier's Weekly about the Spanish Civil War. On this journey Gellhorn met Hemingway, but after their four year marriage she left him in 1945, which Hemingway never forgave.

During WW II Gellhorn witnessed the start of the Finnish Winter War in Helsinki in 1939. She wrote about the bombings of London and participated on D-Day landings in 1944 as a stretcher-bearer and was among the first to meet survivors from Dachau's concentration camp. Her war articles were published in 1955 under the title THE FACE OF WAR.

Gellhorn continued as war correspondent to the age of 80. In 1953 she married journalist Thomas Matthews, who worked for Time. They separeted in the 1960s. Gellhorn died in her home in London. Her books The View from the Ground and The Face of War were reprinted in 1998. - After their separation Gellhorn accused Hemingway of being a liar and jealous writer, who was also a bad lover.

Selected bibliography:

• THREE STORIES AND THREE POEMS, 1923
• IN OUR TIME, 1924
• THE SUN ALSO RISES, 1926 film 1957, dir. by Henry King
• MEN WITHOUT WOMEN, 1927
• A FAREWELL TO ARMS, 1929 film 1932, dir. by Frank Borgaze; film 1957, dir. by Charles Vidor
• DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON, 1932
• WINNER TAKE NOTHING, 1933
• THE GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA, 1935
• TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT, 1937 film 1944, dir. by Howard Hawks, co-script William Faulkner
• FIFTH COLUMN, 1938
• FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, 1940 film 1943, dir. by Sam Wood
• ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES, 1950
• THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, 1952 (Pulizer Prize in 1953) film 1958, dir. by John Sturges - Pulizer Prize 1953
• COMPLETE STORIES, 1954
• A MOVEABLE FEAST, 1964
• BY-LINE, 1967
• ISLANDS IN THE STREEM, 1970 film 1976, dir. by Franklin J. Schaffner
• NICK ADAMS STORIES, 1972
• 88 POEMS, 1979
• SELECTED LETTERS, 1917-1961, 1981
• THE DANGEROUS SUMMER, 1983
• DATELINE: TORONTO, 1985
• THE GARDEN OF EDEN, 1986

Among Hemingway's several film adaptations are also The Macomber Affair (dir. by Zoltan Korda, 1946), The Breaking Point (dir. by Michael Curtiz, 1950), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (dir. by Henry King, 1952), Ernest Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (dir. by Martin Ritt, 1962), The Killers (dir. by Don Siegel, 1964).

Summary: The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises appeared in 1926. In England it's title in Fiesta. The novel deals with a group of expatriates in France and Spain, members of the disillusioned post-World War I Lost Generation.
Main characters are Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes. Lady Brett loves Jake, who has been wounded in war and can't answer her needs. They and their odd group of friends have various saddening adventures around Europa, in Madrid, Paris and Pampalona.
The story is narrated in first person. As Jake, Hemingway was wounded in WW I. They share also interest in bullfighting.
The story ends bitter-sweet:
"Oh, Jake, Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Hemingway wrote and rewrote the novel in various parts of Spain and France between 1924 and 1926. It became his first great success as a novelist.
In 1957 the story was adapted also into screen. The film was directed by Henry King, starring Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner.