Ernest Hemingway

Born in 1899, Ernest Hemingway grew up in Illinois, where forced music lessons and outdoor trips with his father shaped his early writing. After serving as a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I, his severe war injuries and hospital romance directly inspired A Farewell to Arms. Later in Paris, amidst the expatriate "Lost Generation," he developed his minimalist "Iceberg Theory" style, characterized by traumatized yet resilient protagonists. Though his understated prose revolutionized 20th-century American literature, Hemingway’s personal life was consumed by war trauma, physical injury, alcoholism and severe mental health struggles, culminating in his suicide in 1961.