Ernest Hemingway is certainly the most well known of the Lost Generation writers. He, like his fellow ex-patriates in Paris, was influenced by the harshness of war and the time he spent overseas.

Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Ill., an affluent suburb of Chicago. His father was a doctor and his mother gave piano lessons part time. His father got him involved in sports such as fishiung, hunting and boxing at an early age. Hemingway was a good student and was editor of his high school newspaper. After graduation Hemingway became a reporter for the Kansas City Star. The job had a profound impact on his skill and style as a writer.(3)

In 1917 the United States got into World War I and Hemingway joined the Red Cross ambulance corp because his eyesight kept him out of the army. He was wounded on the frontline in Italy and spent the remainder of the war in a hospital with shrapnel in his leg. After returning home from Europe, Hemingway held various jobs in journalism. He got married to his girlfriend Hadley Richardson and at the same time made a new friend named Sherwood Anderson, who convinced him to write his fiction in Paris.(3)

Once they arrived in Paris, Anderson wrote a letter of introduction to acquaint the writers living there with Ernest. Hemingway became friends with writers like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, who mentored him. He was also introduced to Pablo Picasso and other local painters.(4) The friendship of the other writers helped Hemingway's writing. The Hemingway's were supported by Hadley's trust fund while in Paris, but Ernest also wrote pieces for the Toronto Star, which he had worked for previously.(4)

The relationships that Hemingway fostered with Pound, Stein and later F. Scott Fitzgerald had a distinguishable effect on his work. Hemingway said that Pound was his most trusted critic.(3) Pound taught Hemingway to cut out the use of adjectives and make detailed images with his words.(3)

Hemingway composed his first novel, "The Sun Also Rises," while he was in Paris before he left in 1926. Hemingway moved around Europe and to Spain, the inspiration for many of his later novels, such as For "Whom the Bell Tolls." On his way back from Paris, Hemingway stopped in Key West and stayed for a few years.(4) It became the source of my favorite Hemingway novel, "To Have and Have Not."

Ernest Hemingway is a god in writing. Anyone that wants to write in any capacity, especially reporting, has probably read some of his stuff. He wrote a ton of good books, all of which were greatly influenced by his stay in Paris.