50 Fun Facts About Ernest Hemingway

In which Chicago suburb was Ernest Hemingway born in 1899?

He was the second of six children of a physician father and a musician mother.

For which newspaper did Hemingway work as a cub reporter for six months after high school?

Its style sheet, with its short sentences and vigorous English, shaped his prose for life.

In what role did Hemingway serve on the Italian front in World War I?

He was seriously wounded by shrapnel in 1918 and decorated by Italy for helping soldiers to safety despite his injuries.

Which Red Cross nurse, seven years his senior, did the wounded Hemingway fall for?

The romance fed into A Farewell to Arms.

Hemingway moved to Paris in 1921 as a foreign correspondent for which newspaper?

There Gertrude Stein became his mentor and godmother to his son, and introduced him to the 'Lost Generation'.

Who was Hemingway's first wife, eight years his senior, whom he married in 1921?

He married four times in all; Pauline, Martha and Mary followed.

In 1922, Hemingway's first wife lost a suitcase of almost all his manuscripts at which Paris station?

She was travelling to join him in Geneva; only two stories survived.

In which year was Hemingway's debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, published by Scribner's?

He began the draft on his birthday, right after the Pamplona fiesta, and finished it in eight weeks.

Under what title was The Sun Also Rises published in London a year later?

That had been Hemingway's own working title; the final one comes from Ecclesiastes.

The Sun Also Rises' characters travel from Paris to the San Fermín festival in which city?

Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley and friends watch the running of the bulls; the book is a roman à clef about Hemingway's real 1925 trip.

By his own count, how many versions of the ending of A Farewell to Arms did Hemingway write?

A 2012 edition printed no fewer than 47 alternate endings.

In A Farewell to Arms, ambulance officer Frederic Henry falls for which English nurse?

The novel was banned in the Irish Free State.

For Whom the Bell Tolls takes its title from a meditation by which poet?

Meditation XVII of his 1624 Devotions upon Emergent Occasions; the 1943 film starred Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman.

What is Robert Jordan's mission in For Whom the Bell Tolls?

He is a demolitions expert and former Spanish professor from Montana attached to Republican guerrillas.

Which war did Hemingway cover in 1937, providing the material for For Whom the Bell Tolls?

He wrote the novel in Havana between March 1939 and July 1940.

How many days has Santiago gone without a fish at the start of The Old Man and the Sea?

He is 'salao', the worst kind of unlucky, and rows far into the Gulf Stream on day 85.

Which magazine printed the whole of The Old Man and the Sea in a single issue in September 1952?

It sold a record 5.3 million copies in two days.

Which of Hemingway's works won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953?

He wrote its draft in eight weeks, furious at reviews of his previous novel.

In which year did Hemingway receive the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Earlier that year he had been nearly killed in two successive plane crashes in Africa.

How many plane crashes did Hemingway survive on his 1954 trip to Africa?

They left him in pain and ill health for the rest of his life, and drinking harder to cope.

What did Hemingway call his writing style, in which the facts float above water and the meaning stays out of sight?

It is also known as the theory of omission.

In which Florida town did Hemingway settle in 1928 on the advice of John Dos Passos?

Pauline's rich Uncle Gus bought the couple the Whitehead Street house for $8,000 as a wedding present.

The Hemingway House in Key West is famous for cats with what unusual feature?

Legend says they descend from Snow White, a six-toed cat given to Hemingway by a sea captain; about 50 live there today.

How much did the swimming pool Pauline installed at the Key West house in 1937 cost?

It was the first pool in the Florida Keys and cost two and a half times what the whole property had.

What was the name of the 38-foot fishing boat Hemingway bought in 1934?

It was a nickname for his second wife Pauline, and the name of the partisan leader in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

How much did Hemingway pay Wheeler Shipbuilding of Brooklyn for his boat in 1934?

He bought it right after returning from his first African safari.

What is the name of Hemingway's house near Havana, now a museum, where he lived from 1939 to 1960?

The name means 'Lookout Farm'; Martha Gellhorn found it and he bought it for $12,500 in 1940.

Which of Hemingway's wives was a celebrated war correspondent in her own right?

She accompanied him to the Spanish Civil War; they married in Cheyenne in November 1940.

Hemingway's fourth wife, Mary Welsh, was a correspondent for which magazine when they met in London?

He proposed on their third meeting.

A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's memoir of 1920s Paris, was published in which year?

He began it after recovering two trunks of old notebooks from the basement of the Paris Ritz in 1956; his widow saw it into print.

Hemingway's 1932 non-fiction book Death in the Afternoon is a treatise on what?

He first saw the corridas at Pamplona and considered them 'of great tragic interest, being literally of life and death'.

Which 'white hunter', who had guided Theodore Roosevelt in 1909, led Hemingway's 1933 safari?

The trip produced Green Hills of Africa and the story The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

For what did Hemingway receive a Bronze Star in 1947?

He was with Allied troops at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris.

How long was the FBI file it compiled on Hemingway, suspecting him of communism?

He grew paranoid that agents were watching him in Ketchum; they actually were.

In which Idaho town did Hemingway die by suicide in 1961?

His father had also died by suicide, in 1928.

Where was Hemingway treated with electroconvulsive therapy as many as 15 times in December 1960?

He was flown there on the pretext of treatment for high blood pressure.

Key West's Hemingway Days, with its look-alike contest, began as a promotion for which bar?

Founded in 1981, it coincides with his July 21 birthday.

Which Hemingway granddaughter earned an Oscar nomination for Woody Allen's Manhattan?

Her sister Margaux was a 1970s supermodel with a million-dollar Fabergé contract.

Hemingway's 1927 story Hills Like White Elephants centres on a couple obliquely discussing what?

They call it 'the operation' while waiting for a train in the Ebro valley; it appeared in Men Without Women.

Which pen name did teenage Hemingway use in his school paper, after a Chicago Tribune columnist?

He edited the Trapeze and the Tabula, imitating the sportswriters he admired.

What was the profession of Hemingway's father, Clarence?

Clarence taught young Ernest woodcraft on summer trips to Michigan. He killed himself in 1928, a loss his son said he would 'probably go the same way' as.

Hemingway's musician mother made her reluctant son learn which instrument?

He later claimed the lessons shaped his prose, pointing to the 'contrapuntal structure' of For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Which novelist talked the newlywed Hemingways out of Rome and into Paris in 1921?

Anderson, whom Hemingway had met in Chicago, wrote letters of introduction and promised the city held 'the most interesting people in the world'.

Which modernist writer was godmother to Hemingway's first son, Jack?

She coined the 'Lost Generation' label he popularised, though their friendship later curdled into a quarrel that lasted decades.

Hemingway met Ezra Pound by chance in 1922 at which Paris bookshop?

Pound, 14 years older and fresh from editing The Waste Land, introduced him to James Joyce, with whom Hemingway went on 'alcoholic sprees'.

Which leader did Hemingway call 'the biggest bluff in Europe' after a 1923 interview?

He described the dictator posing with a book to look studious while holding a French-English dictionary upside down. Italy banned A Farewell to Arms until 1948.

Who was Hemingway's long-time editor at Scribner's, whose death in 1947 hit him hard?

Perkins also edited Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. He joined Hemingway on fishing trips and an all-male expedition to the Dry Tortugas.

The Hemingways' summer cottage Windemere stood beside which Michigan body of water?

Near Petoskey, it was where Ernest learned to hunt, fish and camp, and the northern woods became the setting for his Nick Adams stories.

Which 19-year-old Venetian inspired the 1950 novel Across the River and into the Trees?

The platonic infatuation produced his worst-reviewed novel; stung by the critics, he wrote The Old Man and the Sea in eight weeks the following year.

During his 1953 African trip, Hemingway officially became a member of which people?

He had identified with the tribe for decades. The same trip ended with two plane crashes and newspapers running his obituary.