Ernest Hemingway has enjoyed a rich legacy as the progenitor of modern fiction, an oversized character in literary lore who wrote some of the most honest and moving accounts of the twentieth century, set against such grand backdrops as the bullrings of Spain, the savannahs of Africa and the rivers of the American Midwest. Verna Kale challenges many of the long-standing assumptions Hemingway’s legacy has created. She offers a real-life portrait of the historical figure as he really was: a writer, a sportsman and a celebrity with a long and turbulent career.Ernest Hemingway follows Hemingway’s adventures as a Red Cross volunteer in the First World War, an expatriate ‘Lost Generation’ poet in 1920s Paris, a young novelist navigating the burgeoning middlebrow fiction market, and a seasoned writer trying to craft his masterpiece – a novel that would blow open the boundaries of American fiction.

Exploring his four marriages, his struggles with his celebrity and craft and the steep decline of his health in later life, this concise biography offers an insightful portrait of one of the most important figures of American arts and letters.