Hemingway Biography

Ernest Hemingway – 1899-1961

Ernest’s Childhood

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in the family’s home at 339 North Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois. The family’s home was built by Ernest’s maternal grandfather Ernest Hall (www.lostgeneration.com). Ernest was the second child of a family of six children. He had four sisters and a brother. Ernest’s parents Dr. Clarence and Grace (nee Hall) Hemingway met while they were both students at Oak Park High School. His father was a general practitioner physician and his mother had trained as a singer. Ernest acquired his love of nature early in life while spending summers at the family summerhouse �Windemere’ on Walloon Lake in Northern Michigan (www.lostgeneration.com). He became a great lover of the outdoors, walking barefoot in the woods and participating in hunting and fishing.

Young Adult – Begins his Literary Career, Serves in World War I

After graduating from high school, his parents had wanted him to follow in his father’s footsteps and go to medical school. However, he did not attend college at all and instead began his literary career as a reporter for the Kansas City Star newspaper. He only worked at the Star for six months when he decided to enlist in the Red Cross to serve in World War I in 1918. Due to his poor eyesight, Hemingway was not able to enlist in active duty but volunteered to drive ambulances. While stationed in Italy on the “west bank of a river near Fossalta, Ernest had been severely wounded,” while carrying a supply of cigarettes, postcards and chocolates for the Italian soldiers (Baker 44). He first got hit with shrapnel quickly followed by a splatter of machine gun fire. Seeing a badly hurt man next to him, he hurled the man up over his shoulder and began to carry him back toward the command post. He had gone about fifty yards when another round of machine gun fire tore into his right leg and knee. The injury caused him to collapse but he somehow managed to get back on his feet and walked another hundred miles to the command post before going unconscious. For his act of heroism, Hemingway was decorated by the Italian Government (www.nobel.se).

Unlucky in Love – Ernest’s Women

Ernest was first brought to a field hospital near Treviso and eventually was brought to the Red Cross Hospital in Milan mid-July 1918. He was popular among the nurses, but one in particular caught his eye. Her name was Agnes Von Kurowsky. Agnes was a fellow American, raised in Washington, DC and on her first foreign assignment. “By the middle of August, Ernest was wildly in love with Agnes” (www.ernest.hemingway.com). However, Agnes did not return his emotions entirely. She didn’t let the affair progress further than the kissing stage. She was deeply committed to her nursing career and older, 26 years old compared to Hemingway’s 19. After two months, Agnes was posted to another hospital near Florence. They wrote to each other often and Hemingway visited Agnes at her post in Florence in December. Agnes hinted that perhaps in two years they could get married. But then wrote a rejection letter not long after. Hemingway was bitter and heartbroken but Agnes would not go easily forgotten. Eleven years later, Hemingway wrote �A Farewell to Arms’ which is a story based on their love affair.

Hemingway went back to Michigan after his tour of duty in Italy. He then found a job as a reporter for Co-operative Commonwealth magazine. Shortly after, he met Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (a.k.a. Hadley) at a friend’s apartment. Elizabeth was again an older woman at the age of twenty-eight to his twenty. They married in September of 1920. They began their life together in a small apartment on North Clark Street, Chicago. Hemingway had given up his job at the Co-operative Commonwealth magazine but would occasionally submit an article to the Toronto Star. The two lived frugally with aspirations of moving to Paris. They acquired a small apartment in Paris early 1922. While in Paris, he began his first novel. Hemingway and Hadley visited Italy and Hemingway was allowed a meeting with Mussolini. Shortly after his return to Paris, Hemingway set out for Constantinople to cover the war between Greece and Turkey. Upon his return, the couple then visited Spain where Hadley became pregnant. Hemingway was very impressed by the bullfights and running of bulls in the street, which provided him with the inspiration for his novel �The Sun Also Rises’. The couple returned to their home in Paris and then traveled to Canada so Hadley could have their child on American soil. Hadley gave birth to son John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway, nicknamed