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, w

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First published 22 November 2004

Citation: McLoughlin, Kate. "Martha Gellhorn". The Literary Encyclopedia. 22 November 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5863, accessed 9 February 2010.]