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Birth
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago and a place he later described as a town of "wide lawns and narrow minds." He was the second of six children of Clarence Hemingway, a doctor, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a musician. -
Dressed like a girl
From his infancy, Hemingway's mother began a strange habit of dressing her son like a girl, complete with dresses and long hair, and his older sister as a boy, with overalls and cropped hair. When Ernest was just six, she finally stopped the charade and allowed him to cut his long hair. The damage has already been done. In adulthood, his friend John dos Passos will describe Hemingway as the only man he ever knew who truly hated his mother. -
School start
Ernest Hemingway enters Oak Park and River Forest High School. He proves to be an excellent student athlete who boxes, plays football and writes for the school newspaper and yearbook. -
Reporter
Hemingway graduates from Oak Park and River Forest High School. He didn’t go to college, instead he took a job as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star newspaper. The Star's style guidelines influenced his writing style for the rest of his career: Use short sentences, short first paragraphs, and strong English. -
World War 1
Hemingway left the newspaper and attempted to join the U.S. Army so he would be able to fight in World War I. The Army rejected him because of poor eyesight, so he volunteered as a driver for the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. -
War wound
While giving out the supplies to the soldiers in Italy, Hemingway was injured by a mortar. The blast left shell fragments in his legs. The Italian government awarded him a Silver Medal of Military Valor for dragging a wounded Italian soldier to safety during the attack, but his career as an ambulance driver was over. While recuperating in a Milan hospital, Hemingway fell in love with an American nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky. -
Rejection from Agnes
Hemingway returned to the States. Agnes soon wrote to him to tell him that she has fallen in love with an Italian officer. Hemingway is heartbroken. Their romance inspired the relationship in A Farewell to Arms and A Very Short Story. -
Toronto Star
Hemingway moved to Toronto, to take a job as a reporter for the Toronto Star which was offered from a family friend. He continued to write for the paper after he moved to Chicago later in the year. -
First Marriage
Hemingway married Elizabeth Hadley Richardson. She turned out to be the first of four wives. -
Paris
The newly married Hemingway’s sat sail for Paris, France. Ernest works as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and soon felled in with many writers and artists that includes Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. -
First Publishing
Hemingway's first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, was published. In the same year, Hemingway brings his pregnant wife to watch a bullfight in Pamplona, hoping it will toughen up their unborn son. Hemingway's first child, John "Jack" Hemingway, is born on 10 October. -
Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway met F. Scott Fitzgerald at the Dingo Bar in Paris, just two weeks after the publication of The Great Gatsby. Their friendship later fell apart in spectacular fashion, thanks to a toxic combination of professional rivalry and a feud between Hemingway and Fitzgerald's wife Zelda. -
First Novel
Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published. The novel is critically acclaimed and commercially successful. -
Second Marriage
Ernest Hemingway divorced Elizabeth Hadley on the 4th April. A month later he married Pauline Pfeiffer, a fashion writer. The same year sees publication of his short story collection Men Without Women. -
Hemingway in Key West and death of his father
Hemingway and Pauline left Paris and moved to Key West. Ernest lived there on and off through the 1950s and completed the majority of his life's writing at the house. The couple's son Patrick is born on 28 June. Hemingway's father Clarence committed suicide on 6 December. -
Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms was published. The novel's success made Hemingway financially independent. -
Third and last child
Ernest Hemingway's third and last child, Gregory Hemingway, was born. Hemingway called the boy "Gig"; in adulthood, as a cross-dresser. -
Non-fiction book
Hemingway went to Spain to research bullfighting for Death in the Afternoon, his critically lauded nonfiction book on the subject. The book has also contains memories and quotes of the First World War. -
Safari in Africa
Pauline and Ernest travelled to Kenya for safari. Hemingway fell in love with the continent. His trips there inspire many works of fiction and nonfiction, including the 1935 book Green Hills of Africa and the short stories "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." -
Spanish Civil War
His novel To Have and Have Not was inspired from the Civil War in Spain. Hemingway travels to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. He developed a strong anti-Franco stance and narrated the antifascist propaganda film "The Spanish Earth." -
Book and Plays
"The Fifth Column," Hemingway's only full-length play, and the first 49 short stories of his career are published in the aptly named book The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories in 1938. -
Another divorce and another marriage
Hemingway divorced Pauline on 4th November. Not even three weeks later, he married the journalist Martha Gellhorn. The couple settled in Finca Vigia, the Cuban estate where Hemingway lived, off and on, for twenty years. The Spanish Civil War novel For Whom the Bell Tolls was published in that same year. -
World War 2 Effort
Submarine Hunter
The United States enters The World War II. Hemingway once again wants to help in war, and volunteered for the Navy, tuning his boat Pilar with guns to hunt for German submarines off the coast of Cuba. Though he never fired at one, the military still awards him a Bronze Star for his service in 1947. -
Trouble in Paradise
At his wife's urging, Hemingway went to Europe as a war correspondent for Collier's magazine. Professional rivalry with Martha, who is also an accomplished war correspondent, soon leads to the breakup of their marriage. -
Third divorce and suicide
Again Hemingway gets divorced and some time later he comits suicide. The reason according to Martin - "He suffered from an enormous burden of psychiatric comorbidities and risk factors for suicide"