By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’ is a popular Ernest Hemingway story with a decidedly atypical un-Hemingwayesque protagonist. First published in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1936, ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’ is about a married American couple on safari in Africa with their English guide. The husband has a failure of nerve when faced with a lion during one of their hunts, and his wife loses respect for him.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Old Man at the Bridge’ is one of Ernest Hemingway’s shortest stories: short enough to be considered as perhaps more of a ‘vignette’ than a ‘story’ as such. Set during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, ‘Old Man at the Bridge’ is about an encounter between the story’s narrator and an old man in his seventies who was the last person to leave his town behind during the war.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The best stories by the American writer Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) are written in spare, clear prose, using short sentences and plain dialogue. This is a trademark feature of Hemingway’s style in his short stories and novels.
But what are Hemingway’s very best stories? He wrote dozens of short stories across his career, especially in the early years of his career in the 1920s and early 1930s. Some of his stories reflect his experiences living in Europe as one of the ‘Lost Generation’ of US expatriates in France and Spain after the end of the First World War.
Below, we select seven essential Ernest Hemingway stories which provide a great way into discovering his fiction. All of these stories are available in the collection The First Forty-Nine Stories (Arrow Classic): Ernest Hemingway.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Soldier’s Home’ is a 1925 short story by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, and one of his earliest and clearest examples of what would prove a prevalent and important theme for his work: alienation.
You can read ‘Soldier’s Home’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of Hemingway’s story below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Hills Like White Elephants’ (1927) is one of Ernest Hemingway’s best-known and most critically acclaimed short stories. In just five pages, Hemingway uses his trademark style – plain dialogue and description offered in short, clipped sentences – to expose an unspoken subject that a man and a young woman are discussing.