Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21, 1899. The second of six children born to Clarence and Grace Hemingway, Ernest grew up in a relatively upper class family. His childhood home was located on 439 North Oak Park Avenue.
By the time Hemingway graduated from high school he got a job as a reporter at the "Kansas City Star." His first major break came after he began covering World War I. Hemingway, however, was not happy just covering the war. He felt he had a patriotic duty to enlist. Unfortunately, the United States would not allow Hemingway to do so because of an eye disorder. He, nevertheless, found another way by enlisting with the Red Cross which was looking for ambulance drivers in Italy. Shortly after arriving in Europe, he was wounded by an Austrian mortar on July 8, 1918.
Upon his arrival back in the United States, Hemingway found work with the "Toronto Star" as a foreign correspondent. Not to long after, he met Hadley Richardson and married her in September of 1921. While together they had a son named John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway. Unfortunately, the marriage would not last and they divorced in 1927. That same year Hemingway would marry Pauline Pfeiffer. Hemingway and Pauline would have two sons together, Patrick and Gregory Hemingway, before they too would divorce.
While with Pauline, Hemingway would gain the inspiration he needed to write his first big novel, "A Farewell to Arms." This novel was loosely based on his experience during World War I. The novel would later be published in 1929.
Hemingway would marry two more times before he met Mary Welsh, his fourth and final bride. They would move to Paris so Hemingway could cover World War II. However, not long thereafter, In 1942, Hemingway moved to Key West, Florida. While in Key West he volunteered to search for undercover U-boats off the coast of Cuba.
After the end of World War II, he was hired to report on the Spanish Civil War. This would later inspire his second novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls." This novel was again loosely based on his experiences during war. In 1952, after moving back to Key West he wrote "Old Man and The Sea." A book based on his love of big game fishing.
Hemingway went on to write several more novels and win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. It was shortly after this accomplishment that he began to suffer from heavy bouts of depression and signs of paranoia. Tired of all the publicity, he would move to Idaho to live in relative seclusion. This would be the place where he would commit suicide by gunshot in 1961.