Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Life (Literary Lives) - Softcover

Linda Wagner-Martin is Frank Borden Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. She has been a Guggenheim fellow, a Rockefeller awardee, and a resident at Bellagio, Bogliasco, and the Bunting Institute. She recently received the Hubbell Medal for lifetime service to American literature. Her 2013 A History of American Literature from 1950 to the Present is her 53rd book. She has written two other books for this series, one on Ernest Hemingway and the other, in both 1999 and 2003, on Sylvia Plath. She writes widely on twentieth-century American literature, biography, women's writing and pedagogy. Her publications include A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway (2000), William Faulkner: Six Decades of Criticism (2002), Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and Hemingway: Eight Decades of Criticism (2009).

Linda Wagner-Martin brings a wealth of new information to this detailed portrait of Hemingway's life and work, now available for the first time in paperback. Emphasizing his immense love of animals, the sea and the natural world, the swiftly told personal narrative gives a crucial insight into Hemingway's character, revealing him as a conflicted idealist caught between his need to write and his need to love. Wagner-Martin explores his friendships with women and the history of his four marriages, and builds up a vivid picture of Hemingway's century - not only the two world wars and the Spanish Civil War, but also the peaceful fishing in the Gulf waters, the African safaris, and the iconic Spanish bullfights.