ERNEST HEMINGWAY
July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961

"I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know, you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg." 

~ He was the second of six children of Dr. Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway.

~ As a boy, Hemingway learned to hunt and fish along the shores and in the forests surrounding Lake Michigan. 

~ He lived in a strict religious home. His father punished with a few lashes of a razor strap. 

~ When Hemingway graduated from high school, he wanted to join the armed forces or learn to write. His father expected him to go to college.

~ Forbidden by his father to go to war, Ernest applied for a job as a journalist.

~ By October 1917 he was working for the Kansas City Star. His first writings consisted of reporting stolen goods and crime, accidents and famous people who passed through Union Station. 

~ When Ernest found out that another young reporter on the Star had enlisted in the American Field Service, he immediately signed up with the Red Cross. Soon, he was accepted as an ambulance driver. He took off for Italy. 

~ Six days before his nineteenth birthday, Hemingway was hit by Austrian artillery. Injured in his knee and foot, he had to return to Milan for many operations. 

~ While in the hospital, he met and fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky.

~ By January 1919 he was back in Oak Park with 227 scars on his wounded leg.

~ The following year, he married Hadley Richardson in the country church at Horton Bay. They lived in a small grubby apartment.

~ Although he occasionally submitted articles, he and his wife lived mostly on her trust fund.

~ From 1925 to 1929 Hemingway produced his best work, including the short story collection In Our Time.

~ His first novel, The Sun Also Rises was followed by Men Without Women and A Farewell to Arms. In four short years he went from being an unknown to being the most important writer of his generation. 

~ In September of 1952 The Old Man and the Sea appeared in Life magazine, selling over 5 million copies.

~ A success both critically and commercially, The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953.

~ Hemingway spent a good amount of his life fighting depression and paranoia, and threatening suicide.

~ One July morning, he rose early, grabbed a shotgun, went upstairs and shot himself in the head. 

~ He is buried in Ketchum, Idaho.