Ernest Hemingway's Four Marriages

What Happened

Ernest Hemingway married Hadley Richardson in September 1921, and together they moved to Paris where he wrote 'The Sun Also Rises.' Their marriage unraveled when Hemingway began an affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, a Vogue journalist who had ingratiated herself as a close friend to Hadley. Richardson divorced Hemingway in April 1927, reportedly receiving all royalties from 'The Sun Also Rises' as part of the settlement. Hemingway married Pfeiffer less than a month later.

Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer had two sons, Patrick and Gregory, and enjoyed a period of relative stability in Key West, Florida. But the pattern repeated: Hemingway met war correspondent Martha Gellhorn in 1936 at Sloppy Joe's bar. Their affair simmered for four years before Pauline finally divorced Hemingway in November 1940. He married Gellhorn sixteen days later.

Martha Gellhorn was the only wife who left Hemingway, not the other way around. Their marriage, the shortest at five years, crumbled under the weight of competing egos and wartime absences. Gellhorn reportedly despised being known as 'Mrs. Hemingway' and later said, 'Why should I be a footnote to someone else's life?' They divorced in 1945.

Hemingway's fourth and final wife, Mary Welsh, married him in Cuba in March 1946 and stayed until his suicide in July 1961. She managed his literary estate, edited 'A Moveable Feast' posthumously, and established the Hemingway Collection at the JFK Library. Hemingway's serial marriages revealed a pattern: each new wife initially served as muse and supporter, only to be replaced when the next inspiration appeared.

Legal Breakdown: Serial divorce and the compounding financial and emotional toll of repeated separations

What This Means for Your Divorce