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On 8 July 1918, near Fossalta di Piave on the Italian front, an eighteen-year-old Red Cross volunteer from Oak Park, Illinois, was badly wounded by mortar fire. Ernest Hemingway would spend the rest of his life writing around that kind of experience without quite stating it. He had learned the house rule “Use short sentences” as a cub reporter on the Kansas City Star, and in Paris in the 1920s he turned it into a style built on omission: plain declarative sentences, repeated words, feeling left under the surface. Within three decades that style had won him the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954), and it was being imitated everywhere. This guide covers his twelve key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1923–1952 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Ernest Hemingway’s best-known books are The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the novella that won the Pulitzer Prize and was cited by the Nobel committee. Start with The Old Man and the Sea; the short stories in In Our Time (1925) and Men Without Women (1927) show where the style began.
Where to Start with Ernest Hemingway
If you want the shortest way in
→ The Old Man and the Sea (1952) — the 1952 novella the Nobel committee named.
If you want the Lost Generation in Paris and Pamplona
→ The Sun Also Rises (1926) — his first full novel.
If you want his war and love story
→ A Farewell to Arms (1929) — the Italian front and the retreat from Caporetto.
If you want the short stories
→ In Our Time (1925) — where the Nick Adams stories begin.
12 Ernest Hemingway Books, in Order
Three Stories and Ten Poems
His first book, privately printed in Paris by Robert McAlmon’s Contact Publishing in an edition of 300 copies. The three stories are “Up in Michigan”, “Out of Season” and “My Old Man”; all three were later folded into his collected stories.
In Our Time
Fourteen stories, published by Boni & Liveright in New York on 5 October 1925, with the short war and bullfight vignettes of his 1924 Paris chapbook in our time placed between them as interchapters. It opens with “Indian Camp” and closes with “Big Two-Hearted River”, two of the stories about Nick Adams, a young man from northern Michigan who goes to war and comes back changed.
The Torrents of Spring
A short comic novel, written quickly in late 1925, that parodies Sherwood Anderson’s Dark Laughter through two men working at a pump factory in northern Michigan. Boni & Liveright, Anderson’s publisher, turned it down, which freed Hemingway from his contract; Scribner’s published it in May 1926 and remained his publisher for the rest of his life.
The Sun Also Rises
Jake Barnes, an American journalist in Paris whose war wound has left him impotent, travels with Lady Brett Ashley, the woman he loves, and a group of expatriate friends to the San Fermín fiesta in Pamplona. Its epigraph is Gertrude Stein’s “You are all a lost generation.” Published in the UK as Fiesta; filmed in 1957 with Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner.
Men Without Women
Fourteen stories, including “The Killers”, in which two hit men wait in a diner for a boxer who does not run, and “Hills Like White Elephants”, a conversation at a Spanish railway station about an operation that is never named. Several are told almost entirely in dialogue.
A Farewell to Arms
Frederic Henry, an American lieutenant in the Italian army’s ambulance corps, falls in love with an English nurse, Catherine Barkley, deserts during the retreat from Caporetto and escapes with her to Switzerland. Catherine was partly based on Agnes von Kurowsky, who nursed Hemingway in Milan in 1918. He said he rewrote the ending 39 times; a 2012 edition printed 47 alternatives. Filmed in 1932 with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes.
Winner Take Nothing
His third collection of stories, fourteen in all, darker than the first two. It includes “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, about an old man drinking alone late at night and the waiter who understands why, and “A Natural History of the Dead”.
To Have and Have Not
Harry Morgan, a fishing-boat captain in Depression-era Key West, is left broke by a client who skips out without paying and turns to smuggling between Cuba and Florida. The book grew out of two stories published in 1934 and 1936. Howard Hawks’s 1944 film with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall keeps little of it beyond the title and Harry.
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories
His only full-length play, The Fifth Column, set in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, together with all the stories of his earlier collections and four new ones: “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, “The Capital of the World” and “Old Man at the Bridge”. For decades it was the standard edition of his stories.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Robert Jordan, an American dynamiter fighting for the Republic, joins a band of guerrillas in the Sierra de Guadarrama to blow up a bridge, and over four days falls in love with María. Hemingway had reported on the war in Spain. The Pulitzer jury and board chose it for 1941, but Columbia’s president Nicholas Murray Butler had the decision reversed and no fiction prize was given. Filmed in 1943 with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman.
Across the River and into the Trees
Colonel Richard Cantwell, fifty years old and dying of heart disease after the Second World War, spends a last weekend duck hunting near Venice and with Renata, an eighteen-year-old countess; she was modelled on Adriana Ivancich, whom Hemingway met in 1948. Most critics panned it, but it topped the New York Times bestseller list for seven weeks.
The Old Man and the Sea
Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman who has gone 84 days without a catch, hooks a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream, fights it for days and loses it to sharks on the way home. Life printed the whole novella on 1 September 1952 and sold more than five million copies in two days. It won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize and was the only book the Nobel committee named in 1954.
In What Order to Read Ernest Hemingway
None of the novels continue one another, so you can read in any order. Publication order does show the arc: the stories and Paris novels of the 1920s are the leanest and most influential; the books of the 1930s and 1940s grow longer and take in Key West, Africa and Spain; the late books are uneven, with The Old Man and the Sea a return to the early concentration.
If you are new to him, read one book of stories and one novel before deciding. The Torrents of Spring makes most sense once you know Sherwood Anderson; leave it for later. The memoir of his Paris years, A Moveable Feast, published after his death, is the best companion to The Sun Also Rises.
A reading path
1. The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
2. In Our Time (1925)
3. The Sun Also Rises (1926)
4. A Farewell to Arms (1929)
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
6. A Moveable Feast (1964)
Everything Else Ernest Hemingway Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 14 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early chapbook
1
1 book · 1924
- 1924in our timeeighteen short vignettes of war and bullfighting, hand-printed in Paris; later the interchapters of In Our Time
Non-fiction published in his lifetime
2
2 books · 1932–1935
- 1932Death in the Afternoonon Spanish bullfighting, and on writing
- 1935Green Hills of Africahis 1933 safari in East Africa
Posthumous fiction
4
4 books · 1970–1987
- 1970Islands in the Streama novel about the painter Thomas Hudson, in Bimini and Cuba
- 1972The Nick Adams Storiesthe Nick Adams stories gathered in one book, with unpublished fragments
- 1986The Garden of Edenan unfinished novel about a married couple on the Riviera, heavily cut for publication
- 1987The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingwaythe Finca Vigía edition, with previously unpublished stories
Posthumous memoir, journalism, poems and letters
7
7 books · 1964–2005
- 1964A Moveable Feasthis Paris years, 1921–1926, edited by his widow Mary; a restored edition followed in 2009
- 1967By-Line: Ernest Hemingwayselected journalism
- 197988 Poemshis collected poems
- 1981Selected Letters 1917–1961letters edited by Carlos Baker
- 1985The Dangerous Summerthe 1959 rivalry between the bullfighters Ordóñez and Dominguín
- 1999True at First Lighta 1953–54 safari in Kenya, edited by his son Patrick
- 2005Under Kilimanjaroa fuller version of the same African manuscript
The years · 1899–1961
Quick facts about Ernest Hemingway
- Known for
- A spare style of short sentences and omission, and novels of war and expatriate life such as A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea
- 1899
- Born in Oak Park, Illinois
- 1918
- Wounded on the Italian front, aged 18
- 1961
- Dies in Ketchum, Idaho
- Born
- 21 July 1899, Oak Park, Illinois
- Died
- 2 July 1961, Ketchum, Idaho, by suicide
- First War
- Red Cross ambulance volunteer in Italy; wounded near Fossalta di Piave, 8 July 1918
- Lived
- Paris, Key West, Finca Vigía near Havana, and Ketchum
- Married
- Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer, Martha Gellhorn and Mary Welsh
- Honours
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1953); Nobel Prize in Literature (1954)
The red mark is 1952: The Old Man and the Sea, the novella that won the Pulitzer Prize and was named in his Nobel citation.
How Ernest Hemingway Writes: The Iceberg
Hemingway learned his trade in newspapers. The style sheet of the Kansas City Star, where he worked as a cub reporter in 1917–18, told him to use short sentences, short first paragraphs and vigorous English, and he later reported from Paris for the Toronto Star. His prose keeps that discipline: plain words, simple declarative sentences joined by “and”, few adjectives and almost no explanation of what anyone feels.
He called the method that shapes the books the iceberg. In Death in the Afternoon (1932) he wrote that “the dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”: a writer who knows something well can leave it out and the reader will still feel it. Jake Barnes’s wound in The Sun Also Rises is never described; the operation in “Hills Like White Elephants” is never named. Much of the work is dialogue, with repetition doing the work of emotion.
His subjects came from his own life — war, bullfighting, fishing, hunting, Paris, Key West and Cuba — and so did many of his characters, which made him enemies. The Nobel committee in 1954 cited “the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style”, and that influence runs through Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy and many others: see Authors like Ernest Hemingway.
Listen
Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
Ernest Hemingway’s own recording of his 1954 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which he did not deliver in person in Stockholm. From the archive of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
Frequently asked questions about Ernest Hemingway’s books
How many books did Ernest Hemingway write?
In his lifetime he published seven novels (counting The Torrents of Spring and the novella The Old Man and the Sea), six short story collections (counting the 1924 chapbook in our time) and two books of non-fiction. Many more appeared after his death, including A Moveable Feast (1964) and Islands in the Stream (1970). This page lists 26: the 12 key books and 14 more in the bibliography.
What are Ernest Hemingway’s books in order?
Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923), In Our Time (1925), The Torrents of Spring (1926), The Sun Also Rises (1926), Men Without Women (1927), A Farewell to Arms (1929), Winner Take Nothing (1933), To Have and Have Not (1937), The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Across the River and into the Trees (1950) and The Old Man and the Sea (1952). His non-fiction and the posthumous books are in the bibliography above.
What is the best Ernest Hemingway book to start with?
The Old Man and the Sea. It’s short, self-contained, and demonstrates his stripped-down style at its most concentrated, without requiring context about the Lost Generation or the wars he covered.
What is Ernest Hemingway’s most famous book?
The Old Man and the Sea (1952) is the most widely read, and the only book named when he won the Nobel Prize. Among the full-length novels, The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) are the best known.
Did Ernest Hemingway win the Nobel Prize?
Yes. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style”. Still recovering from two plane crashes in Africa that year, he did not go to Stockholm; the US ambassador to Sweden, John M. Cabot, read his speech.
Did Hemingway win the Pulitzer Prize?
Yes, once: the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for The Old Man and the Sea. In 1941 the jury and board had chosen For Whom the Bell Tolls, but Columbia University’s president, Nicholas Murray Butler, found the book offensive and persuaded the board to reverse the decision, so no fiction prize was awarded that year.
What is Hemingway’s iceberg theory?
His name for writing by omission. In Death in the Afternoon (1932) he compared good prose to an iceberg, with only one-eighth above water: if a writer knows something well enough, he can leave it out and the reader will still sense it. The unnamed operation in “Hills Like White Elephants” is the best-known example.
Is The Sun Also Rises antisemitic?
Its portrayal of Robert Cohn is the most debated part of the book. The other characters keep calling Cohn a Jew, use at least one slur and shut him out, and the critic Barry Gross argued that Hemingway makes Cohn unattractive because he is Jewish. Others read the prejudice as the characters’ rather than the novel’s. Cohn was based on the writer Harold Loeb, who was part of the 1925 trip to Pamplona.
Which Hemingway books have been made into films?
Most of the novels. A Farewell to Arms was filmed in 1932 and 1957, For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1943, To Have and Have Not in 1944 (and again as The Breaking Point in 1950), The Sun Also Rises in 1957 and The Old Man and the Sea in 1958 with Spencer Tracy; Aleksandr Petrov’s animated version of the novella won an Oscar in 2000. Across the River and into the Trees followed in 2022.
How did Ernest Hemingway die?
He shot himself at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, on 2 July 1961, three weeks before his 62nd birthday. He had been in poor health since two plane crashes in Africa in 1954, and had been treated for depression, including electroconvulsive therapy at the Mayo Clinic in 1960–61.
Footnotes
- Ernest Hemingway — Wikipedia
- Ernest Hemingway bibliography — Wikipedia
- Hemingway’s Books — JFK Presidential Library
- Ernest Hemingway: Facts — The Nobel Prize
- The Sun Also Rises — Wikipedia
- For Whom the Bell Tolls — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.”
— Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize banquet speech (1954)
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