Ernest Hemingway

On July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest Hemingway was born into a middle-class family that valued outdoor life, music, and discipline. He began as a reporter for The Kansas City Star in 1917, where its terse style strongly influenced his later prose. Ambulance service in World War I and injury on the Italian front deepened his fascination with violence, masculinity, and endurance.

Hemingway published The Sun Also Rises in 1926 and A Farewell to Arms in 1929, turning expatriate life and wartime disillusion into central themes of modern literature. During the 1930s and 1940s he reported on the Spanish Civil War and World War II, weaving journalism and fiction into a public image of literary combativeness. His stripped-down sentences and emphasis on omission became hallmarks of twentieth-century American style.

Hemingway's writing influenced generations of novelists, reporters, and creative writing programs in the United States and abroad. The war novel, the journalistic feature, and the cult of literary masculinity all carried traces of the form he helped make canonical.