Ernest Hemingway
His Childhood.
He was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, IL, and was the second child born to Dr. Clarence and Grace Hemingway. His mother developed an odd fondness for dressing him and his older sister Marcelline as "twins"; sometimes as boys, with short hair and overalls, and sometimes as girls, with flowery dresses and long hair.
World War I
When Hemingway was only 18, he responded to a Red Cross recruitment effort and became an ambulance driver in Italy. He drove ambulances for two months until he was wounded from severe shrapnel wounds.
First Marriage
He marries Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, who turns out to be the first of four wives.
World War II
In 1947, he was awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery during World War II.
Paris
After marrying Elizabeth, they set sail for France. His friend Sherwood Anderson was the one who recommended Ernest go to Paris, because he thought he'd like it there.
First Son
Elizabeth Hadley Richardson gives birth to his first child, John "Jack" Hemingway, on October 10, 1923.
First Publication
In 1923, Hemingway's first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, is published. In the same year, Hemingway brings his pregnant wife to watch a bullfight in Pamplona, Spain, hoping it'll toughen up his son.
Hemingway & Fitzgerald
Hemingway met F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, at the Dingo Bar in Paris. Their friendship later falls apart due to professional rivalry and a feud between Hemingway and Fitzgerald's wife Zelda.
Snowball
Ernest was given a white polydactyl (six-toed) cat by a ship's captain and he named it Snowball. His old home in Key West, which is now a museum, is inhabited by approximately 40-50 polydactyl cats; some are descendants of Snowball.
First Novel
In 1926, his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published. It was critically acclaimed and commercially successful.
The Hemingway Code
The Hemingway Code are a set of characteristics for the characters in his works. They are figures who try to follow a masculine moral code and make sense of the world through those beliefs. The "Hemingway Code Hero" typically has some sort of physical/psychological wound symbolizing the tragic flaw of his character, which the character must overcome.
Remarriage & Key West
He divorces Elizabeth Hadley on the 4th of April, 1927 and one month later he marries Pauline Pfeiffer; a fashion writer. The two leave Paris and move to a house in Key West, Florida. She is the mother of his second child Patrick.
Gregory Hemingway
Ernest's third and last son, Gregory was born on Nov. 12, 1931. Ernest affectionately called him "Gig", but in adulthood; as a cross-dresser, Gregory chooses to call himself Gloria. Sadly, this enrages his ultra-macho father.
African Safari
Pauline and Ernest travel to Kenya for a ten-week safari. He falls in love with the continent. He wrote the 1935 book Green Hills of Africa and a couple of short stories there.
The 3rd Wife
Hemingway divorces Pauline on the 4th of Nov., 1940 and less than three weeks later, he marries the journalist Martha Gellhorn. The couple settles in Finca Vigia, the Cuban estate where Hemingway will live, off and on, for twenty years. The Spanish Civil War novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is published in the same year.
Mary Welsh
Ernest divorced Pauline and married a war correspondent, Mary Welsh, his fourth and final wife, on the 14th of March, 1946. On the 19th of August, she miscarries due to an ectopic pregnancy. The couple never produce any children with each other.
Across the River and Into the Trees
In 1950, Hemingway's novel Across the River and Into the Trees is published. Sadly, it's the most poorly reviewed novel of his career.
Midnight in Paris Hemingway Scene "Read My Novel?"
Nobel Prize
On Dec. 10, 1954, Ernest Hemingway is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the fifth American author to receive the award. At the time, Hemingway was still recovering from serious injuries sustained in two separate plane crashes and a bushfire accident earlier in the year and was unable to travel to Stockholm to receive the award. The American ambassador John C. Cabot accepted the prize on his behalf and read his speech aloud.
Goodbye Cuba
He leaves Cuba forever following the 1959 revolution in which his acquaintance Fidel Castro leads communist revolutionaries to power. The Cuban government takes possession of his home, Finca Vigia, and will later turn it into a Hemingway museum.
The Hemingway Family Curse
Suffering from depression, alcoholism, and numerous physical ailments, Ernest Hemingway commits suicide with a shotgun at his home in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961. He receives a Catholic burial, as the church judges him not to have been in his right mind at the time of his suicide. He was buried in Ketchum.