Posted on July 2, 2018 at 3:40 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
On this day in 1961, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in his Idaho home.
To mark his death, Literary Hub takes a look at the first review of each of his nine published novels, starting with 1926’s The Torrents of Spring and concluding with The Garden of Eden in 1986 — check them out here.
Hemingway began his career as a newspaper reporter, eventually covering events including the Greek Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II (including the D-Day landing).
His wartime experiences colored two of his best-known novels, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Hemingway went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, both for The Old Man and the Sea.
His personal life was tumultuous, to say the least. He was married four times, and in addition to covering wars, he was injured while serving in one during his time as an ambulance driver in Italy.
Hemingway continued to seek adventure well after the war through big-game hunting in Africa, bullfighting in Spain, and deep-sea fishing in Florida.
A hard-lived life began to take its toll on him in his later years, with wartime injuries compounded by several plane crashes, and his mental and physical health declined greatly during the 1950s.
Categories: Today in Books