Ernest Hemingway

Literature / Writer's Datebook: July 21

 

 

 

 

Brief biography of American novelist and short story writer Ernest Hemingway, famous for A Farewell to Arms, For Whom The Bell Tolls,  and The Old Man and the Sea.

 

Ernest Hemingway was one of the most influential American writers of the 20^th century. His adventurous life added a ring of truth to his novels and short stories, for example, big game-hunting (Green Hills of Africa). In 1953 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his famous book The Old Man and the Sea, and the following year he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Early Life 

 Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, the second of six children. At the age of 19 he was badly wounded in Italy while serving as a Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I. After the war he went to Paris, and became part of a group of prominent literary writers and avant garde artists including Gertrude Stein, who called themselves the "Lost Generation". He first gained recognition as a writer with the publication of his short-story collection "In Our Time" when he was 26.

Pursuit of Life and Interest

In the 1920s and 1930s Hemingway spent much time pursuing his interest in hunting and dangerous supports in Africa, Spain, and Florida. During the Spanish Civil War he went to Spain as a reporter.  One of his greatest novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, is about this war.   

Hemingway also reported on World War II, following America troops as they invaded France and liberated Paris from the Germans. He got married four times, with the first three wives ending in divorce. In a fit of depression, Hemingway shot himself and died on July 2, 1961, at the age of 61.

Hemingway Writing Style

Hemingway's books are famous for their "macho" protagonists and brutal stories. He himself was drawn to adventure and danger and as notorious for his hard-drinking lifestyle. He wrote in short, simple sentences that make his scenes descriptions seem all the more harsh and detached. The influence of his work has continued through the years, not only on American literature but worldwide. His novels have been made into successful films.  

 

Works by Ernest Hemingway

In Our Time, 1925

The Sun Also Rises, 1926

Men without Women, 1927

A Farewell to Arms, 1929

Death in the Afternoon, 1932

The Green Hills of Africa, 1935

To Have and Have Not, 1937

For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940

Across the River and into the Trees, 1950

The Old Man and the Sea, 1952

A Moveable Feast, 1964 (published after he died)

 

Photo Credit:

Ernest Hemingway.  en.wikipedia.org/public domain 

Resources:

Goring, Rosemary, Editor. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. Larousse, 1994

Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. Carlton Books Ltd, 1997

Ousby, Ian. Cambridge Guide to Literature. Cambridge, 1993

 

(c)  July 21, 2010. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Victor Hugo

Literature / Writers Datebook: February  26

   

Brief biography and works of French writer Victor Hugo, novelist, dramatist & poet, creator of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' and 'Les Miserables.'

Victor Hugo was the most important of the French Romantic School of writers. He is most popular today as the author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Miserables (1862.)

Early Life

Victor Hugo, (1802-1885), French novelist, dramatist and poet, was born on February 26  in Besancon, France, the third son of a soldier in the army of the great French leader Napoleon. He was raised and educated by his mother. At the age of 14, he showed talent as a poet.

Influence and Early Works

Inspired by the example of the statesman and author Francois Rene Chateaubriand, he published poetry, plays and novels. His works showed a strong sense of social responsibility. The production of his play Hernani, a highly romantic and unconventional poetic drama, caused ripples between supporters and opponents of the new socially challenging drama at that time. Due to the controversy, Hugo established himself as leader of the French literary romanticism. His novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, published when he was 29, made him famous.

Gabriel García Márquez

Literature / Writers Datebook: March 6

 

Brief biography of Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, novelist and short story writer, noted for magical realism stories, and famous for his book, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

 

 

Gabriel García Márquez is one of South America's most respected and famous writers. He is best known for One Hundred Years of Solitude, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. Garcia Marques is generally regarded as the greatest practitioner "magic realism".

The term "magic realism" refers in particular, to works of South American novelists in which are describes happenings in the real world with excursions into the realm of fantasy.       

Early Life

Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, on March 6, 1928, in a small town in Colombia. His childhood home was large and extended, and became the inspiration for many of his later work. After studying law in college, Garcia Marquez became a newspaper journalist and began to publish stories and articles in various periodicals.

Career as a Journalist

His work as a journalist took him to Europe and to the South American countries, where he witnessed the oppression and violence suffered by people living under dictatorships. His own country, Colombia, also suffered from political violence.

The Novelist

At the age 27, Garcia Marquez published his first book, Leafstorm and Other Stories. Macondo, the fictional Colombian town that is the setting for the title story, later became the setting for his most famous book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. He wrote it during a stay in Mexico several years later, and it was published when he was 39.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, which became internationally famous, follows the fortunes of the Buendia family and the provincial town in which they live from the earliest days pf European settlements to the present. Garcia Marquez vividly narrates the lives of the decaying family. It is an allegory of the history of Colombia. 

Garcia Marquez's style of writing mixed politics and everyday life in a settling that was full of larger-than-life characters, sex, violence and magical events - a good example of magic realism.    

Later Years

However, in his later novel, The General in his Labyrinth, a fictionalized biography of Simon Bolivar, the hero of Latin American independence, according to critics, seemed to mark a departure of the work of Garcia Marquez in a more realistic approach to his subject. 

Gabriel García Márquez died on April 17, 2014 (age 87 years), in Mexico City, Mexico

 

Works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Leafstorm and other Stories, 1955

No One Writes to the Colonel, 1958

One hundred Years of Solitude, 1967

The Autumn of the Patriarch, 1975

In Evil Hour, 1979

Chronicle of a Death Foretold, 1981

Love in the Time of Cholera, 1985

The General in his Labyrinth, 1989-1990

Of Love and Other Demons, 1995

 

Photo credit:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. NNDB.com

 

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers (2002)

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse (1994)  

Guide to Literature in English, by Ian Ousby, Cambridge University Press (1993)

 

(c) March 2009. Updated March 6, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.