For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 1899. His father was a doctor and he was the second of six children. Their home was in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb.

In 1917 Hemingway joined the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. The following year he volunteered to work as an ambulance driver on the Italian front where he was badly wounded but twice decorated for his services. In 1922 he reported on the Greco-Turkish War, then two years later resigned from journalism to devote himself to fiction.

Hemingway's first two published works were Three Stories and Ten Poems and In Our Time but it was the satirical novel The Torrents of Spring that established his name more widely. His international reputation was firmly secured by his next three books: Fiesta, Men Without Women and A Farewell to Arms. He visited Spain during the Civil War and described his experiences in the bestseller For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.

Inspired by his experiences as a reporter during the Spanish Civil War, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls tells the story of Robert Jordan, an American volunteer in the International Brigades fighting to defend the Spanish Republic against Franco. After being ordered to work with guerrilla fighters to destroy a bridge, Jordan finds himself falling in love with a young Spanish woman and clashing with the guerrilla leader over the risks of their mission.

One of the great novels of the twentieth century, For Whom the Bell Tolls was first published in 1940. It powerfully explores the brutality of war, the loss of innocence and the value of human life.

This stunning edition features an afterword by Ned Halley.

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