Ernest Hemingway – Biography / Chronology / Timeline

1899 Born July 21 in Oak Park, Illinois, the second of six children of Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a medical doctor, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a singer and music teacher.

1917 Graduates from Oak Park High School; rejected by U.S. Army for service in World War I because of eye injured in boxing; works as cub reporter for Kansas City Star.

1918 Serves in Italy as Red Cross ambulance driver; suffers severe injury to legs under heavy machine-gun fire; meets and falls in love with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky while recuperating in Milan. She rejects him as too young.

1919 Returns to United States.

1920–24 Reporter and foreign correspondent for ‘Toronto Star’ and ‘Star Weekly’.

1921 Marries Hadley Richardson; moves to Paris.

1922 Reports on Greek–Turkish war for Toronto Star. Meets Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Hadley loses all of Hemingway’s unpublished manuscripts on a train.

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Click for John Milton’s chronology of his life and works

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1923 Three Stories and Ten Poems published in Paris. Goes to Spain for bullfights in Pamplona; returns to Toronto for birth of son, John Hadley (Bumby) in October.

1924 In Our Time published in Paris.

1925 In Our Time, American edition, published; includes fourteen stories that were not in Paris edition. Meets and becomes friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

1926 Torrents of Spring published in May; The Sun Also Rises published in October.

1927 Men Without Women published; contains fourteen short stories. Divorces; marries Pauline Pfeiffer.

1928 Moves to Key West, Florida; son Patrick born. Father commits suicide.

1929 A Farewell to Arms published.

1931 Son Gregory Hancock born.

1932 Death in the Afternoon published.

1933 Winner Take Nothing, a collection of stories, published. Publishes first of thirty-one articles and stories to appear in ‘Esquire’ during next six years. Goes on safari to Africa.

1935 Green Hills of Africa published.

1936–37 Writes, gives speeches, and raises money for Loyalists in Spanish Civil War; works on propaganda film The Spanish Earth.

1937 To Have and Have Not published. Returns to Spain as war correspondent, on Loyalist side, for North American Newspaper Alliance.

1938 The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories published.

1939 Separates from wife and moves to Finca Vigia, a house near Havana, Cuba.

1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls is published. Divorced; marries Martha Gellhorn. Buys house in Cuba.

1942–45 War correspondent in Europe for newspapers and magazines.

1944 Begins relationship with news correspondent Mary Welsh. Divorced by wife in December.

1946 Marries Mary Welsh in March.

1950 Across the River and Into the Trees published.

1952 The Old Man and the Sea published in ‘Life magazine’.

1953 Returns to Africa for safari with Mary.

1954 Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature. In January, severely injured in two plane crashes in Africa; reported dead.

1959 Health declining; follows bullfights in Spain, where he observes sixtieth birthday.

1960 Returns to United Sates and settles in Ketchum, Idaho.

1961 Undergoes electroshock treatment for depression. On June 2, dies at home of self-inflicted gunshot wound.

1964 A Moveable Feast published.

1970 Islands in the Stream published.

1972 The Nick Adams Stories collected in one volume; includes previously unpublished stories and fragments.

1986 The Garden of Eden, Hemingway’s last manuscript, heavily edited and rearranged, published.