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IMPORTANT DATES AND EVENTS IN HEMINGWAY’S LIFE
1899
Born on July 21, in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, the second of six children of Clarence Edmunds Hemingway, M.D., and Grace Hall Hemingway.
1915
Starts writing seriously under the influence of, and with encouragement from, Miss Dixon, his English teacher, for the school weekly newspaper, Trapeze.
1916
Publishes his first short story, “Judgment of Manitou” in imitation of Ring Lardner.
1917
Graduates from Oak Park High School; is rejected by the U.S. Army because of an injured eye; migrates to Canada and works as a cub reporter on Kansas City Star.
1918
Goes to Italy as a Red Cross ambulance driver with the rank of an honorary lieutenant; his legs are severely injured by mortar fragments and heavy machine-gun fire on the midnight of July 8, two weeks before his nineteenth birthday, near Fossalta di Piave.
1919-1920
Receives his discharge from the Italian Army on July 4. Accepts the editorship of Cooperative. Commonwealth, the journal of the cooperative societies of the United States.
1921
Marries Hadley Richardson, who was a couple of years older than him; joins The Daily Star and The Star Weekly of Toronto (Canada), as a reporter.
1921-1923
Is sent abroad by the Star group of newspapers as their foreign correspondent, with headquarters in Paris.
1922
Reports on the Greco-Turk war. Later uses this experiences in A Farewell to Arms.
1923
Returns to America for on the birth of his first son. Publishes Three Stories and Ten Poems from Paris, containing “Up in Michigan”, “Out of Season’’, “My Old Man”.
1924
Publishes In our time in Paris, a collection of miniatures, of thirty-two pages.
1925
Boni & Liveright publish In Our Time, his first book in the U.S., containing fourteen short stories plus the miniatures of the Paris edition of In our time.
1926
Boni & Liveright refuse The Torrents of Spring, which is then published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, in May. Later, in October they also publish The Sun Also Rises. Starts an affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, a friend of Hadley. She was a dark-haired fashion writer for Vogue, posted in Paris.
1927
Divorces Hadley to be able to marry Pauline. Publishes Men Without Women, a collection of fourteen short stories, ten of which had already appeared in magazines.
1928
Acquires a home at Key West, Florida, where he lives with Pauline for the next ten years. Develops deep-sea fishing as a hobby, and acquires Pilar, a forty-foot boat for the purpose.
1929
His father commits suicide. Publishes A Farewell to Arms, his first commercial success; 80,000 copies sold in the first four months.
1932
Publishes Death in the Afternoon, a classic on bull-fighting, and incidentally on aesthetics too.
1933
Publishes The Winner Takes Nothing, a collection of fourteen short stories. His first, of the thirty-one articles and short stories to appear in Esquire during the next six years, is published.
1934
Catches his first giant marlin; goes to Africa for big game hunting, the cost being written off by Pauline’s uncle.
1935
Publishes Green Hills of Africa, based on his experiences of the African safari; goes to Bimini for giant marlin fishing, where he establishes records for three years in succession.
1936-1937
Travels extensively in Spain, and America to raise money for the Loyalist cause in Spain... Collects 40,000 dollars by writing and speaking. Covers the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspapers Alliance. Prepares a movie also for raising money for the Loyalists. Publishes To Have and Have Not.
1938
Publishes The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, containing the play, the short stories in the previous three collections, plus seven previously published stories in magazines.
1940
Pauline divorces him for desertion; he marries Martha Gellhorn whom he had met in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and fell in love with; publishes For Whom the Bell Tolls, his best-selling book.
1942
Publishes Men at War, a collection of war stories and accounts, edited and with an introduction by Hemingway.
1942-1944
Converts Pilar into a Q-boat to hunt Nazi U-boats, off the shore of Cuba, and is commended for his initiative and bravery.
1944
Goes to the U.K. to fly with the Royal Air Force.
1944-1945
Attaches himself to the 22nd regiment of the Third Army, after the D-Day; officially a correspondent, actually a combatant who claims that he liberated the Ritz Hotel in Paris from the Nazi forces.
1945
Is decorated with the Bronze Star; divorces Martha to marry Mary Welsh, his fourth wife.
1950
Publishes Across the River and Into the Trees, which is severely criticized by the critics.
1952
The Old Man and the Sea is published in Life on September 1, and is an immediate success.
1952-1961
After his two air-crashes in Africa, Hemingway becomes a different personality—obsessed with worries of failures and money; is admitted to Mayo Clinic on two occasions for psychological problems.
1954
Wins Nobel Prize for literature; cited for “forceful and style making mastery of the art of modern narration” and faithfully depicting the “hard countenance of the age”.
1961
Dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on July 2, in his Ketchum (Idaho) home.
1969
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War are published posthumously.
1970
Islands in the Stream is published posthumously; it is edited by his biographer, Carlos Baker.
1974
Charles Scribner’s Sons publish The Enduring Hemingway: An Anthology of a Lifetime in Literature.
1976
Mary Hemingway publishes her autobiography: The Way It Was, about the years she spent with Hemingway.