Martha Gellhorn was a pioneering woman war-correspondent of the twentieth century, a glamorous and brave individual who covered conflicts from the Spanish Civil War to Reagan's wars in Central America in the 1980s. Married for four years to Ernest Hemingway, she also wrote novels, short stories and travel pieces and co-authored a play. Her war dispatches are collected in
The Face of War(various editions, 1959-98) and her peacetime journalism in
The View from the Ground(1988).
Gellhorn was born in 1908 in St. Louis, Missouri, to an educated, liberal family. Her father, George Gellhorn, born and educated in Germany, was a professor of gynaecology. Her mother, Edna Fischel Gellhorn, to whom Martha was very close, was an active social reformer and early campaigner for women's suffrage. Like
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Citation: McLoughlin, Kate. "Martha Gellhorn". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 November 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5863, accessed 25 November 2024.]
