Ernest Hemingway, 1899–1961

Abstract Born in a Chicago suburb on July 21, 1899, Ernest Hemingway was a child of the twentieth century, responding to its every pressure, recording its progress, and aging as it aged. His life seemed to embody the promise of America: with good fortune, hard work, talent, ambition, and a little ruthlessness a man can create himself in the image of his choosing. As a young man in Paris, Hemingway dedicated himself to his writing, and he let nothing interfere with his goal, not parents nor wives, not friends nor children. He created a public persona to match his prose, becoming the person he wanted to be. Like other self-made Americans, however, Hemingway’s invented self was a mask that he wore with less and less ease as he grew older. Despite this public image, his raucous life and several wives, and the critics who turned on him, he left stories and novels so starkly moving that some have become a permanent part of our cultural inheritance.