Ernest Miller Hemingway was born the second of six children in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21, 1899. His mother, Grace, was a religious woman with musical talent, while his father, Clarence Edmonds (“Ed”) Hemingway, was an outdoorsman who loved hunting and fishing in the northern Michigan woods. From an early age, Ernest shared his father’s interests. He also vacationed with his mother on Nantucket Island and heard tales of his seafaring great-grandfather, Alexander Hancock. Much of what Hemingway learned in the early years about the outdoors and nature’s lessons became the basis of many of his stories, such as some of the Nick Adams stories and The Old Man and the Sea.
Hemingway attended Oak Park and River Forest high schools, where he wrote for the newspaper and the literary magazine and participated in sports such as boxing, swimming, and football. He didn’t attend college but instead began working as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. Later, he also wrote for the Toronto Star and Star Weekly. His early journalistic career profoundly impacted his literary writing style, which was always honed and spare.
