Journalist and writer, born in St Louis, Missouri, USA. She studied at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. In 1936 she met Ernest Hemingway (whom she married in 1940 and divorced in 1946) and the following year became war correspondent for the Collier's Weekly, covering the Spanish Civil War and wars in Finland, China, and Java. Later she reported from wars in Vietnam (1966), the Middle East (1967), and Central America (19835). She is best known for her books of collected journalism and memoirs, which include the acutely observed Travels with Myself and Others (1978).
Martha Gellhorn (8 November 1908 - 15 February 1998) was an American novelist, travel writer and journalist, considered to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century.
Gellhorn was also the third wife of American novelist Ernest Hemingway, from 1940 to 1945.
Early life
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Gellhorn graduated from the John Burroughs School there and enrolled in Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia.
Upon returning to the US, Gellhorn was hired by Harry Hopkins as an investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which sent her to report about the impact of the Depression on the United States.
War in Europe
Gellhorn first met Hemingway during a 1936 Christmas family trip to Key West. They agreed to travel in Spain together to cover the Spanish Civil War, where Gellhorn was hired to report for Collier's Weekly.
After living with Hemingway for four years, they married in 1940. Increasingly resentful of Gellhorn's long absences during her reporting assignments, Hemingway wrote her when she left their home in Havana in 1943 to cover the Italian Front: "Are you a war correspondent, or wife in my bed?"
Later career
After the war, Gellhorn worked for the Atlantic Monthly, covering the Vietnam War, the Six-Day War in the Middle East and the civil wars in Central America.
Gellhorn published a large number of books, including a collection of articles on war, The Face of War (1959), a novel about McCarthyism, The Lowest Trees Have Tops (1967), an account of her travels (including one trip with Ernest Hemingway), Travels With Myself and Another (1978) and a collection of her peacetime journalism, The View From the Ground (1988).
Peripetetic by nature, Gellhorn reckoned that in a 40-year span of her life, she had created 19 homes in different locales. During a long working life, Gellhorn reported widely from many international trouble-spots.
Gellhorn died in London in 1998, aged 89, taking her own life after a long battle with cancer and near total blindness. Since her death, the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism has been established in her honour.
Gellhorn published books of fiction, travel writing and reportage.
Marriages and love affairs
Martha Gellhorn was extremely attractive to men — particulary heroic, risk-taking men.
Her first major affair was with the French economist Bertrand de Jouvenel.
She probably had an affair with H.G.
She first met Hemingway in Key West in 1936. Gellhorn resented her reflected fame as Hemingway's third wife, remarking that she had no intention of being a footnote in someone else's life.
She was faithful to Hemingway with the exception of a fling with US paratrooper James M.
She married Tom Matthews, editor-in-chief of Time magazine, in 1954;
In 1949, Gellhorn adopted a son from an Italian orphanage, Sandy Gellhorn. Although Gellhorn was first a devoted mother, she was not a truly maternal woman, and she left Sandy to the care of her relatives in Englewood for a long period of time.
Her spectacular sexual conquests seem to have been driven by the need for the companionship of alpha males rather than any kind of lust. In 1972 she wrote:
User Comments Add a comment…