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A Chronology for the Life of Ernest Hemingway (Click here for an illustrated brief biography of Hemingway online at the Smithsonian.)

• 1899 - Ernest Miller Hemingway was born to Clarence and Grace Hemingway on July 21 in Oak Park, IL.  (This link will take you to the site connected with the centennial of Hemingway's birth.  A tour in photographs of the Hemingway home is at the site.)

• 1917 - He graduated River Forest High School and got a job as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. (Follow the "alumni" link to see other famous graduates of this high school.)

• 1918 - In World War I, Hemingway drove an ambulance for the American Red Cross.  He was wounded on July 8 on the Italian front near Fossalta di Piave and had an affair with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky as he was convelescing after over 200 pieces of shrapnel were removed from his legs.   (These experiences are the biographical basis for his first novel, A Farewell to Arms.)

• 1920 - Hemingway started reporting for the Toronto Star .

• 1921- Ernest married Hadley Richardson (his 1st of 4 wives); they moved to Paris, France, on the advice of American playwright Sherwood Anderson, to join the expatriate community of writers there.

• 1922 - As a correspondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway covered the Greco-Turkish War.

• 1923 - Hemingway's Three Stories and Ten Poems was published by Robert McAlmon in Paris; his first son, John, was born.

• 1924 - in our time, a collection of vignettes, was  published in Paris by Three Mountains Press.

• 1925 - In Our Time, adding fourteen short stories to the earlier vignettes, was published in New York by Boni & Liveright.

• 1926 - The Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises are published by Charles Scribner's Sons, who became Hemingway's regular publisher.

• 1927 - Hemingway published a short story collection, Men Without Women, which included "Hills Like White Elephants"; he married Pauline Pfieffer after divorcing Hadley Richardson.

• 1928 - The Hemingways moved to Key West, Florida,  where son Patrick was born.  Hemingway's father, Dr. Clarence E. Hemingway, committed suicide on Dec. 6th; Hemingway asked his brother to send him the gun that their father had used.

• 1929 - Hemingway's father committed suicide in Oak Park, IL; Hemingway asked for the gun his father used to kill himself to be sent to him.  A Farewell to Arms was published after the first manuscript was lost by Pauline and Hemingway had to start over.  Commentary on the novel.  Background on how the events of the novel parallel Hemingway's own wounding, plus his reactions in poetry to being wounded and in the war.

• 1931 - Gregory, Hemingway's third son, was born.

• 1932 - Death in the Afternoon, a nonfiction study of bullfighting is published.

• 1933 - Hemingway published a short story collection, Winner Take Nothing.

• 1935 - Hemingway published Green Hills of Africa.

• 1937- Hemingway reports as war correspondent on the Spanish Civil War; To Have and Have Not was published (later made into a movie that starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall).

• 1938 - Hemingway collaborated with Joris Ivens on The Spanish Earth, a film espousing the Loyalist cause; he also published The Fifth Column and the First : Forty-nine Stories.

• 1940 - He divorced Pauline Pfieffer and married Martha Gellhorn, also a writer.  The Hemingways purchased Finca Vigia to be their home in Cuba; For Whom the Bell Tolls was published. ( This link goes to Marcel Mitran's irreverent biography of the 1940s for Hemingway.)

• 1942 - Hemingway edited Men at War.

• 1944- He met Mary Welsh in London, traveled  with American troops in France and Germany as a World War II correspondent, and participated in the Allied liberation of Paris.

• 1945- Hemingway divorced Martha Gellhorn, supposedly for laughing at him in the hospital after he was involved in a serious car crash.

• 1946 - He married Mary Welsh.

• 1947 - Hemingway received the Bronze Star for his role in the liberation of Paris. (Scroll down to the bottom photo at this link to decide for yourself if his actions were heroic.)

• 1950 - Across the River and into the Trees was published.  Hemingway survived a nearly fatal plane crash.

• 1951 - Ernest's mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, died.

• 1952 - The Old Man and the Sea was published (and later made into a movie starring Spencer Tracy).

• 1953 - Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

• 1954 - Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

• 1960 - The Hemingways moved to Ketchum, Idaho, near Sun Valley.  Ernest was hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic for uncontrolled high blood pressure, liver disease, diabetes, and depression.  He received shock treatments because he thought the FBI was following him, but he couldn't convince others.   These treatments weakened and emaciated Hemingway, along with his diseases, and drained him mentally so that he found it nearly impossible to write.  (The FBI was keeping tabs on him because he had lived in Cuba until Castro took over.)

• 1961 - Hemingway committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho, at about 5:00 a.m. on July 2,  by shotgun to the head (his father had used a pistol); he was found by his wife, Mary.  He is buried in Ketchum.

• 1964 - A Moveable Feast was published posthumously.

• 1969 - The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War were published as scholars began to find Hemingway's unfinished manuscripts.

• 1970 - Islands in the Stream was published.

• 1972 - The Nick Adams Stories, a short story collection, was published.

• 1985 - The Dangerous Summer was published.

• 1986 - The Garden of Eden, a novel Hemingway started about a love triange, was completed and published.

• 1987 - The Complete Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition was published as the definitive version of Hemingway's best stories.

  Encarta Concise biography of Hemingway   

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This chronology of Hemingway's life is adapted and augmented from the timeline at http://rio.atlantic.net/~gagne/hem/time.html

Photo of Ernest Hemingway downloaded from http://www.ee.mcgill.ca/~nverever/hem/cover.html   It may not be copied for profit.

The URL for this page is: http://vccslitonline.vccs.edu/copy_of_hills/chronol.htm