| Unbelievable
Happiness and Final Sorrow
The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Marriage
Ruth A. Hawkins
The
only biography of Ernest Hemingway’s second marriage
It was
the glittering intellectual world of 1920s Paris expatriates
in which Pauline Pfeiffer, a writer for Vogue, met
Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Hadley, among a circle of friends
that included Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos
Passos, and Dorothy Parker. Pauline grew close to Hadley but
eventually forged a stronger bond with Hemingway himself;
with her stylish looks and dedication to Hemingway’s
writing, Pauline became the source of “unbelievable
happiness” for Hemingway and, in 1927, his second wife.
Pauline
was her husband’s best editor and critic, and her wealthy
family provided moral and financial support, including the
conversion of an old barn to a dedicated writing studio at
the family home in Piggott, Arkansas. The marriage lasted
thirteen years, some of Hemingway’s most productive,
and the couple had two children. But the unbelievable happiness
met with final sorrow, as Hemingway wrote, and Pauline would
be the second of Hemingway’s four wives.
Unbelievable
Happiness and Final Sorrow paints a full picture of Pauline
and the essential role she played in Ernest Hemingway’s
becoming one of America’s greatest literary figures.
Ruth
A. Hawkins
has been an administrator at Arkansas State University in
Jonesboro for more than thirty years and established its Arkansas
Heritage Sites program, which includes the Hemingway-Pfeiffer
Museum in Piggott. She has been recognized at the state, regional,
and national level for her work in historic preservation and
heritage tourism.
June
6 x 9, 391 pages
49 images, index
$34.95 cloth
978-1-55728-974-2
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