Acclaimed author Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899 in Illinois. After graduating from high school, he went to write for the Kansas City Star before serving as a volunteer ambulance driver during World War I. He later lived in Paris alongside other writers of note, including F. Scott Fitzgerald. He published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926. It follows a group of American and British travelers heading to Pamplona, Spain to watch bullfights, and was very well-received.
In 1929 he published another book, A Farewell to Arms, that strongly resembled his own experience, as it was about an American ambulance driver during World War I. From there he drafted several major nonfiction works about topics like bullfighting, his experience on a safari, and the Spanish Civil War. The latter would inspire another of his most famous works, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
He would go on to write more novels, often inspired by real events. His last published book during his lifetime was The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, a story of an aging fisherman trying to catch a giant marlin. After surviving two plane crashes while traveling in Africa a couple of years later, his mental health cratered. He died by suicide in 1961.
You can read more about many of Hemingway's most famous works in this article from The Collector.
