The Letters of Ernest Hemingway

As we commemorate the centennial of the start of the Great War, we remember the soldiers who fought on the battlefields of Europe. Among them was a young Ernest Hemingway.

...about midnight on the seventh day an enormous trench mortar hit within a few feet of Ernest while he was giving out chocolate. The concussion of the explosion knocked him unconscious and buried him with earth. There was an Italian between Ernest and the shell. He was instantly killed while another, standing a few feet away, had both his legs blown off. A third Italian was badly wounded and this one Ernest, after he had regained consciousness, picked up on his back and carried to the first aid dug-out. He says he does not remember how he got there nor that he had carried a man until the next day when an Italian officer told him all about it and said that it had been voted upon to give him a valor medal for the act.

The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 1

His war experience inspired one of his greatest novels, A Farewell to Arms.

Hemingway Birthday Celebration Draws Capacity Crowd

“A Night in Paris” was the theme for the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park’s 115th birthday celebration for the author.

Guest of honor Sandra Spanier, general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, read from the new book, “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 2, 1923-1925.” This volume covers Hemingway’s time in Paris and features letters to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Erza Pound.

From writing haunts to favorite bars, follow the ex-pat author's steps through Paris