Three Stories and Ten Poems

When Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) published Three Stories and 10 Poems in 1923, he was 24, a wounded veteran of the Great War, and still three years away from publishing his debut novel (The Sun Also Rises). So the "Three Stories" give us a unique look into Hemingway's developing writing skills and his very particular areas of creative interest. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, to a physician father and musician mother, Hemingway by his teens had already been a reporter. Then, at age 18, he drove an ambulance on the Italian front in World War I, where he was seriously wounded. Before he returned home in 1919, he'd fallen in love with a Red Cross nurse who later left him for another man. That experience affected his future relationships with women and each of his four wives. In September 1919, he went on a fishing and camping trip in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The following year he returned to Michigan for a time. These trips and his feelings about women likely are in the mental mix for the