Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life - Hardcover

Moorehead, Caroline

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805065539 ISBN 13: 9780805065534

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2003

Synopsis

The first major biography of legendary war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, whose life provides a unique and thrilling perspective on world history in an extraordinary time

Martha Gellhorn's heroic career as a reporter brought her to the front lines of virtually every significant international conflict between the Spanish Civil War and the end of the Cold War. The preeminent-and often the only-female correspondent on the scene, she broke new ground for women in the male preserve of journalism. Her wartime dispatches, marked by a passionate desire to expose suffering in its many guises and an inimitable immediacy, rank among the best of the twentieth century.

A deep-seated love of travel complemented this interest in world affairs. From her birth in St. Louis in 1908 to her death in London in 1998, Gellhorn passed through Africa, Cuba, China, and most of the great cities of Europe, recording her experiences in first-rate travel writing and fiction. A tall, glamorous blonde, she made friends easily-among the boldface names that populated her life were Eleanor Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein, and H. G. Wells-but she was as incapable of settling into comfortable long-term relationships as she was of sitting still, and happiness often eluded her despite her professional success. Both of her marriages ended badly-the first, to Ernest Hemingway, publicly so.

Drawn from extensive interviews and with exclusive access to Gellhorn's papers and correspondence, this seminal biography spans half the globe and almost an entire century to offer an exhilarating, intimate portrait of one of the defining women of our times.

About this title

About the Author:

Caroline Moorehead is a distinguished biographer, book reviewer, and journalist. Her biographies of Iris Origo and Bertrand Russell were both New York Times Notable Books.She will edit a collection of Gellhorn's letters, to be published by Henry Holt in 2004, and is also writing a book about the international refugee crisis. She lives in London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

New York with Hemingway was not what she expected. In Key West there had been time for long flirtatious meetings, time to talk seductively about writing and political commitments. In New York they were always in a crowd, everyone drinking, rushing in and out, answering the telephone, going to the Stork Club and Twenty One. Martha was frantic herself. She needed papers for Spain, and with some difficulty persuaded her friend Kyle Crichton at Collier's magazine to give her, not exactly a job, but a letter identifying her as their special correspondent. Martha also needed money for her boat ticket to Europe. Vogue obligingly commissioned her to write an article on "Beauty Problems of the Middle-Aged Woman," which involved acting as a guinea pig for a new experimental skin treatment. (It ruined her skin, she told a friend years later, but it got her to Spain.)

There was nothing now to keep her. Before boarding her ship, she wrote to Mrs. Barnes, a family friend in St. Louis: "Me, I am going to Spain with the boys. I don't know who the boys are, but I am going with them."

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0805065539
• ISBN 13: 9780805065534
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480