In the summer of 1917, Ernest Hemingway was an 18-year-old high school graduate unsure of his future. The American entry in the Great War stirred thoughts of joining the army. While many of his friends in Oak Park, Illinois, were heading to college, Hemingway couldn't make up his mind, and eventually chose to begin a career in writing and journalism at one of the great newspapers of its day, the Kansas City Star. In six and a half months, Hemingway experienced a compressed, streetwise alternative to a college education, which opened his eyes to urban violence, the power of literature, the hard work of writing, and a constantly swirling stage of human comedy and drama. The Kansas City experience led Hemingway into the Red Cross ambulance service in Italy, where, two weeks before his 19th birthday, he was dangerously wounded at the front. Award-winning writer Steve Paul takes a measure of these experiences that transformed Hemingway from a "modest, rather shy and diffident boy" to a young man who was increasingly occupied by recording the truth as he saw it of crime, graft, exotic temptations, violence, and war. Hemingway at Eighteen sheds new light on this young man bound for greatness and a writer at the very beginning of his journey.

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a shy twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness when she meets Ernest Hemingway and is captivated by his energy, intensity and burning ambition to write. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for France. But glamorous Jazz Age Paris, full of artists and writers, fuelled by alcohol and gossip, is no place for family life and fidelity. Ernest and Hadley's marriage begins to founder, and the birth of a beloved son serves only to drive them further apart. Then, at last, Ernest's ferocious literary endeavours begin to bring him recognition - not least from a woman intent on making him her own . . .

Some 25 Hemingway scholars critique Hemingway's works from the early apprentice fiction of 1919, stories Hemingway wrote, dog."

In 1918 , a one-month stint with the American Red Cross ambulance corps at the Italian front marked the beginning of Ernest Hemingway’s fascination with Italy—a place second only to Upper Michigan in stimulating his lifelong passion for geography and local expertise. Hemingway’s Italy offers a thorough reassessment of Italy’s importance in the author’s life and work during World War I and the 1920s, when he emerged as a promising young writer, and during his maturity in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This collection of eighteen essays presents a broad view of Hemingway’s personal and literary response to Italy. The contributors, some of the most distinguished Hemingway scholars, incorporate new biographical and historical information as well as critical approaches ranging from formalist and structuralist theory to cultural and interdisciplinary explorations. Included are discussions of Italy’s psychological functioning in Hemingway’s life, the author’s correspondence with his father during the writing of A Farewell to Arms, his stylistic experimentation and characterization in that novel, his juxtaposition of the themes of love and war, and his take on Fascism in both his fiction and journalistic work. In addition, the essayists explore relevant contexts of period and place—such as the rise of Fascism, ethnic attitudes, and the cultural currents between Italy and the United States. A landmark study, Hemingway’s Italy brings long-overdue attention to this great writer’s international role as cultural ambassador. Contributors : Rena Sanderson, Nancy R. Comley, Kim Moreland, Steven Florczyk, Kirk Curnutt, Lawrence H. Martin, John Robert Bittner, Jeffrey A. Schwarz, J. Gerald Kennedy, H. R. Stoneback, Beverly Taylor, Ellen Andrews Knodt, Linda Wagner-Martin, Robert E. Fleming, Miriam B. Mandel, Joseph M. Flora, Margaret O’Shaughnessey, Stephen L. Tanner, Vita Fortunati

An introduction to the life and work of one of the most significant and notorious American writers of the 20th century. Ernest Hemingway's literary status alone makes him worthy of a biography. In addition, his life reads like a suspense story--it's full of action, romance, heartbreak, machismo, mishaps, celebrity, and tragedy. He had first-hand experience of several historic events of the last century, and he rubbed elbows with many other notable writers and intellectual greats of our time. Though his reputation has weathered ups and downs, his status as an American icon remains untouchable. Here, in the only biography available to young people, Catherine Reef introduces readers to Hemingway's work, with a focus on his themes and writing styles and his place in the history of American fiction, and examines writers who influenced him and those he later influenced.