He lived in Paris for the next seven years, working on his fiction and serving as a European correspondent for American newspapers. Like many of his compatriots of the Lost Generation, Hemingway left America for Europe, where he joined the group of literary expatriates in Paris, including Gertrude Stein and F. To support himself, however, he returned to reporting, accepting a position at the Toronto Star. Disillusioned with the war and with romantic relationships, Hemingway returned home and turned his attention to fiction writing. After suffering severe leg injuries, Hemingway met and fell in love with a nurse who would eventually break off their relationship. When World War I broke out, he volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy. The position helped him develop a journalistic style, which would later become one of the most identifiable characteristics of his fiction. After graduating high school in 1917, Hemingway started his career as a reporter for the Kansas City Star, covering city crime and writing feature stories.

During this period, he also began to write poems and stories, some of which were published in his school's literary magazine. He started writing when he was a teenager, penning a weekly column for his high school newspaper. Author BiographyĮrnest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, to Clarence Edmunds (physician) and Grace (music teacher) Hemingway, both strict Congregationalists. Hemingway's compassionate and authentic portrait of his characters as they struggle to retain their idealistic beliefs has helped earn the novel its reputation as one of Hemingway's finest. Yet his courage enables him to remain devoted to the cause, even as he faces death. His initial idealism is quickly tempered by the realities of war. While his previous works focused more on the meaninglessness of war, this novel ends with a reaffirmation of community.įor Whom the Bell Tolls chronicles the experiences of American college professor Robert Jordan, who has volunteered to fight for the Loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War. Yet his attitude toward his subject in For Whom the Bell Tolls reveals a subtle shift. Hemingway had previously explored this theme, most notably in his short story collection, In Our Time (1924), and in his novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929). Readers praised its realistic portrait of not only the political tensions in Europe that would soon erupt into World War II but also the complexities of the entire experience of war for the individual who found him or herself fighting for a cause. When For Whom the Bell Tolls was published in 1940, it immediately became a resounding critical and popular success and helped cement Ernest Hemingway's reputation as one of America's foremost writers.

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