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Florida Artists: Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway with a prized Tuna caught off of BiminErnest Hemingway, a preeminent literary figure of the 20th century moved to Key West in 1928, living there periodically until 1940. Hemingway wrote all or part of his most famous works including A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro in Key West. In 1954, Ernest Hemingway became only the fifth American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He also was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Old Man and the Sea.

Born in Oak Park Illinois, Ernest Hemingway started his career as a writer in a newspaper office. His mother Grace Hall, whom he never forgave for dressing him as a little girl in his youth, had an operatic career before marrying Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemingway; he taught his son to love out-door life. Hemingway's father took his own life in 1928 after losing his health to diabetes and his money in the Florida real-estate bubble. in Kansas City at the age of seventeen.

After the United States entered the First World War, Hemingway joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, Ernest Hemingway was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. World War I showed him a different side of life, which did not, however, leave him entirely depressed and broken. His illusions were shattered, but the experiences gathered were invaluable.

Ernest Hemingway married Hadley Richardson, after the war and shortly afterward his first son was born.  After his return to the United States, Hemingway became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.

During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises. Being a Artist in the "City of Light", as Paris still is called by some, he may have had a hard time from the financial point of view, but all in all the 'twenties were days of friendship, the financial and artistic struggle kept Hemingway fit. He was mentored there by Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.



Key West Author Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, himself a great sportsman, liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women  and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories 

In his novels, Ernest Hemingway used violence extensively, yet subtly. Never is there a description of death for its own sake, it always contributes to a larger theme, in A Farewell to Arms it is mainly human commitment, and in For Whom the Bell Tolls mainly comradeship. It contributes in an unusual way. No matter what exactly happens in those two books, violence and death are always involved, but just act as a sort of sublime intensification of the protagonist's feelings and experiences.

Death and violence were the two great constants in Hemingway's troubled, chaotic life. Fifty-one years later, Ernest Hemingway used a gun to kill himself. He was a tough, strong man with strong principles. Hemingway "believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could only have one end", yet he was blessed with talent and drive. That may have made it harder for him to admit his failures and correct them. Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961. In 2001, two of his books, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, would be named to the list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the American Modern Library.

During his lifetime Ernest Hemingway was awarded:
Silver Medal of Military Valor (medaglia d'argento) in World War I
Pulitzer Prize in 1953 (for The Old Man and the Sea)
Nobel Prize in literature in 1954 (also partly for The Old Man and the Sea)

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Florida Author
Novelist, Historical Writer
Ernest Hemingway, a preeminent literary figure of the 20th century moved to Key West in 1928, living there periodically until 1940. Hemmingway wrote all or part of his most famous works including A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro in Key West. In 1954, Ernest Hemingway became only the fifth American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He also was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Old Man and the Sea.
DOB: July 21, 1899 00:00:00.000