Ernest Hemingway is one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century. Born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway spent his summers at the family cabin in Northern Michigan. It was a formative place for the young writer; he not only developed a love of the outdoors there, but also used the setting as inspiration for his future writing. Hemingway showed an early aptitude for writing in high school. After graduation, he skipped college and instead moved to Kansas City in search of independence and adventure. He worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star at just 17. Soon after, he served as an ambulance driver for the Italian army in World War I.

Hemingway returned from war injured and heartbroken after a failed engagement. (He went on to have four wives and three children in his life.) He moved between Canada, the U.S., and Paris as a newspaper writer until penning his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1925). The novel captured a generational aimlessness and proved the perfect canvas for the writer’s concise, punchy prose. It is considered by many to be his finest work, and one of the greatest novels of all time. By the release of his third novel, the World War I love story A Farewell to Arms (1929), Hemingway was a literary star.

When he wasn’t reporting on the Spanish Civil War or writing For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Hemingway spent much of the 1930s seeking adventure around the world: hunting in Africa, taking in bullfighting in Spain, and deep-sea fishing aboard his beloved boat, Pilar. After a rapid succession of literary classics, Hemingway also released his most famous book, The Old Man and the Sea, in 1952. In 1954, the author won the Nobel Prize in literature. After years of success but also deteriorating physical and mental health, Hemingway took his own life at his home in Idaho in 1961 at age 61.