Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

By Ernest Hemingway

Before he gained wide fame as a novelist, Ernest Hemingway established his literary reputation with his short stories. This collection, The Short Stories, originally published in 1938, is definitive. Among these forty-nine short stories are Hemingway's earliest efforts, written when he was a young foreign correspondent in Paris, and such masterpieces as “Hills Like White Elephants,” “The Killers,” “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” Set in the varied landscapes of Spain, Africa, and the American Midwest, this collection traces the development and maturation of Hemingway's distinct and revolutionary storytelling style—from the plain, bald language of his first story, “Up in Michigan,” to the seamless prose and spare, eloquent pathos of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” to the expansive solitude of the Big Two-Hearted River stories. These stories showcase the singular talent of a master, the most important American writer of the twentieth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribner
• Release date: May 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781476770192

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer of his time. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. His classic novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His life and accomplishments are explored in-depth in the PBS documentary film from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Hemingway. Known for his larger-than-life personality and his passions for bullfighting, fishing, and big-game hunting, he died in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961. 

Reviews for Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

[rosecityreader · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

How can I review a book that took me 30 years to read? This is not just a book, it is part of my life. I have been working on The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway longer than all my formal education, two marriages, and my law practice.But I can’t review Hemingway, especially when my attitudes about his writing have changed over the decades. I was unquestionably awed as a teenager, snide as a college English major, a genuine fan as an adult, and now just a little weary. His writing is masterful. He was a genius with spare dialog and creating reality with only a few brush strokes. (Of course, because he taught Americans a new way of writing, reading the original does not pack the wallop it must have before everyone copied him.) What wore me out was the subject matter – the bull fights and the Spanish Civil War in particular. It just got to be a chore for me to get to the end.Longer version posted on Rose City Reader.

[parp-4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Nice, crisp language, beautiful dialogs. When I was young I thought it was great. Now, I'm not so sure.

[bkohl_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Complete Short Stories consists of the First Forty-Nine (itself a compilation of stories from In Our Time, Men Without Women, Winner Take Nothing and The Snows of Kilimanjaro), 14 stories published after 1938, and 7 unpublished stories, some of which are actually drafts for a novel.I absolutely love Hemingway. I sometimes wish I didn't, as some of these stories are completely depressing, but there it is. I haven't read most of the novels, but the short stories are magnificent, and I'm going to stop there, give away my copies of The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms, and let the stories stand on their own.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dit is Hemingway op zijn best: puntig, gevat, een complexe wereld vattend in enkele pagina's, zeer suggestief. Zeer uiteenlopende themas: oorlogsverhalen zonder hero?ek, heroiek zonder franje, adolescentenliteratuur, en vooral de echtelijke leegte. Sarcasme en cynisme overheersen

[dandelionroots · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ack, I really do love his prose - his subject matter is often another thing. My favorite by far, "The Last Good Country", is of course one of the few uncompleted works. The only others I noted are: Indian Camp, A Very Short Story, Soldier's Home, Mr. and Mrs. Elliot, The Undefeated, In Another Country, Fifty Grand, Ten Indians, Today Is Friday, Banal Story, Homage to Switzerland, A Day's Wait, A Natural History of the Dead, Get a Seeing-Eyed Dog, and An African Story.

[bexaplex · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Complete Short Stories consists of the First Forty-Nine (itself a compilation of stories from In Our Time, Men Without Women, Winner Take Nothing and The Snows of Kilimanjaro), 14 stories published after 1938, and 7 unpublished stories, some of which are actually drafts for a novel.I absolutely love Hemingway. I sometimes wish I didn't, as some of these stories are completely depressing, but there it is. I haven't read most of the novels, but the short stories are magnificent, and I'm going to stop there, give away my copies of The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms, and let the stories stand on their own.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dit is Hemingway op zijn best: puntig, gevat, een complexe wereld vattend in enkele pagina's, zeer suggestief. Zeer uiteenlopende themas: oorlogsverhalen zonder heroïek, heroiek zonder franje, adolescentenliteratuur, en vooral de echtelijke leegte. Sarcasme en cynisme overheersen

[tracy_tomkowiak · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of my very first purchases after I discovered the likes of bookstores such as Borders and B&N. Great writing from a true master. The physical sensation of handling a book – the weight of it, the crispness of the pages, the particular smell... I'll never own an e-reader.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hemingway expresses it well himself in one of the stories when he describes his alter-ego as writing morbid stories. Maybe not morbid, but they all have such a morose feel to them. It's like listening to hours of music in a minor key, discordant and mournful. He was not a happy camper. There is no joy in any of his stories. Awe sometimes, but never joy.

[pessoanongrata · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

His best work. This is where his true legacy resides.

[salmondaze · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is certainly a collection that outstrips The First Forty-Nine, but some of the "bonus stories" are fileted from other books instead of being short stories in their own true rights, making this collection a step away from "perfect" or "complete" as the title would indicate. I would get the Everyman Library Collected Stories instead of this for people who really want to dig into Hemingway's short story prowess.

[susanbevans · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This collection of stories is wonderful. Hemingway was a master of the short story genre and one of the finest American writers ever. Ever word is meaningful and well crafted into extraordinary stories. "Hills Like White Elephants" is my absolute favorite of the bunch.

[chrisv_46 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this about 6 years ago, until then I had read most of Hemingway's novels which I enjoyed immensely, on a flight from Havana I got talking to my neighbour who taught Hemingway she told me her favourites were the short stories. Some of these stories are very short indeed and the quality does vary but the very best and there are a huge number of very well written stories are very very good. I love Hemingway although I don't usually read short stories these are amongst his best works. They have a haunting quality and a still remember scenes from them, a boy with his canoe hiding amongst lakes and rivers or an man skiing, tales of love obviously written by a young man with the arrogance and cockiness of youth.

[santhony_35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having read several of Hemingway's longer novels (The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls) I looked forward to this collection with great anticipation. My appetite was only whetted with the first story in the collection, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", which I found to be magnificent. Alas, it proved to be the star of the collection. While several of the remaining stories were certainly outstanding (in particular "Fifty Grand", A Way You'll never Be", "Under the Ridge", "An African Story" and "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something"), a number of the stories were less than spectacular. Particularly disappointing were the numerous efforts of under 750 words. Now, you may be a brilliant writer, and even a master of the art of story telling, but in my opinion, you cannot tell a story in two pages. You can set a scene; you can paint a picture, but you cannot tell a story. I counted ten such SHORT SHORT short stories and another fifteen only slightly longer. Those stories which ran beyond 6-8 pages were, by and large quite enjoyable. Having read several of Hemingway's longer works and found them to be, in some cases, in need of editing, and now having read a number of his works which can only be described as overly brief, I'm left with the opinion that he is best enjoyed in those works of 10-200 pages, not coincidentally the length of his Pulitzer Prize winning novella, "The Old Man and the Sea". I'm struck by a passage in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" in which the Communist partisan Pilar recounts the revolution within her village in which the Fascists (a/k/a the successful citizens) were rounded up and murdered. Those twenty pages, lifted out, would have qualified as one of the greatest short stories ever written, yet it becomes somewhat lost in a story that wanders at times. Certainly, this book will be enjoyed by anyone who has developed a taste for Hemingway and to a lesser extent, those who enjoy the art of the short story. I only gave high marks to roughly a third of the offerings, however those 23 stories account for almost 75% of the pages in the book. The other efforts are simply too short for my taste, and they account for a majority of the stories in the collection.

[bzedan_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a tome. It's difficult to summarise or review short story collections, especially one so extensive as this.So lemme just say, there is a reason that Heminway is canon. He reminds me of Chekhov, of Vonnegut—the sadness implicit in humanity's existence and the true, yet sometimes hollow joy that is found despite it.

[andyray_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

for me to give these marvelous nick adams and early war stories anything less than five stars would be blasphemous indeed. I've read and re-read the early stories, and especially "Up in Michigan," "Indian Camp," and "Big Two-Hearted RIver (parts 1 and 2)" are delicious to read again, and again. If I were allowed only one book or one person's work to have for eternity, it would be Papa's Before one thinks I am going to put him on a pedestal and worship him as a cohort of the angels, let me say I know he spelled worse than an Irish immigrant and didn't "develope" a style in maturity. His fifth grade essay reprinted by Carlos Baker in that author's biography shows the exact same literary style as used in "A Farewell to Arms." I sure wish I could find an editor like Max Perkins, or an agent like Scott Meredith.

[jbreedlove_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

All of Hemingways' stories in one collection. Including The Big Two-Hearted River and A Clean, Well Lighted Place.