The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife - Paris Without End

After having read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, I wanted to learn more about his first wife, Hadley. This book is very informative about her and her marriage to Ernest. The book is slow and because the author did such a thorough job of researching Hadley, it often repeats itself, from different sources. All in all, I am glad I read the book, but again it was not an easy read and I had to put it down many times before continuing.Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife (P.S.)

Hadley Hemingway fans and historians should really enjoy this, because it follows her mostly, but I am not a historian.This was really informative in certain parts, and you do decide that Hemingway was not a great husband or father by any means. Ultimately, however, the historical information was lost on me. I thought it dull, and it took me a while to read. Nothing against the writer, but this was not the book for me.

Our book club chose this selection over The Paris Wife because of talk about accuracy. Well, I didn't need THAT accurate. First, you have to care enough about Hemingway, nevermind his family, wife, wives and friends. I don't. For me, it was a dry, slow book where I could open any given page and read about a dinner at someone's home. It all looked the same to me.

If you are a Hemingway fan and/or scholar, I'm sure the book is a very good read with tons of information.

This meticulously researched book reads like a novel; so much that I could not put it down. Diliberto wrote it twenty years ago, so she was able to interview some of Hadley and Ernest's friends. One of those friends had actual tapes of conversations with Hadley herself. The author weaves the tapes, conversations, interviews, letters between Hadley and Ernest and other research into a beautifully written account of their lives together. Not only is it a love story, it transports you to Paris of the twenties. The Fitzgeralds, the Murphys, Getrude and Alice are all here, but presented from the unusual angle of bit players. I didn't read "A Paris Wife", so I can't compare the two books, but this one tells the real story. Loved it.

A biography under another name, another name, another name, is still the same biography. Caveat emptor: Diliberto's biography of Hadley, Hemingway's first wife, published in 2011 under the title Paris Without End is simply the paperback version of the 1992 biography entitled Hadley.

"Paris without End," is a new literary nonfiction biography of Hadley Richardson, the iconic first wife of beloved 20th century American author Ernest Hemingway. It was written by Gioia Diliberto, veteran author/journalist, who points out in her preface to the 2011 edition that once there was hardly a woman considered worthy of a biography, at all. And then, even when the lives of some outstanding women began to be studied, nobody thought, for a long time, of looking at the wives of outstanding men. Despite that familiar old adage, `behind every great man there's a great woman.' It is only now being recognized that some wives were indeed instrumental in their husbands' successes; and it's Diliberto's thesis, based upon Hemingway's copious writings, that Hadley Hemingway was one. Still, there's no question but that Hadley would not reward study were she not Hemingway's first, template-setting wife. And there's no question but that this book will most interest Ernest Hemingway fans. After all, although Hadley can be credited with inspiring her husband's writings, and creating an environment in which he could work, she never published a line.

The period after World War I, never mind that the generation that lived through that war chose to call itself the Lost Generation, was full of new developments. Suffragism -- the fight for women's rights--was in the air, as was prohibition. Flappers emerged: women cut their hair and their skirts, took up smoke and drink, and danced on the tables of their favorite speakeasies. Paris was the world center of creativity. In the art world, greatly famous painters were there: the Spanish Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miro; Auguste Renoir, Marc Chagall. In the literary world, there were almost too many stars to count: Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, James and Nora Joyce, Sarah and Gerald Murphy, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, Ford Madox Ford, and whoever: at one time Ford had a ménage a trois with his common law wife and the great 20th century female author Jean Rhys. And then there was Sylvia Beach and her book store, Shakespeare & Co. In fact, there were so many artistic and literary notables there that they kept Owen Wilson, the Woody Allen stand-in in Midnight in Paris quite busy.

Like so many others in the period, Hadley and Ernest expatriated themselves to Paris. And Hadley and Hem were certainly a golden couple while they were happy and poor, living on Hadley's trust funds, and in the home she made for them, exploring Europe, and playing with their little boy, known as Bumby, when he arrived. Everyone seemed to expect that Hem was bound for literary glory. Of course, there were some problems. In an act that may have foreshadowed the future, and was heavily influential at the time, Hadley lost all copies of her husband's first novel. And then there was the disastrous summer with the Murphys on the French Riviera. Bumby got whooping cough, had to be quarantined, and so was poor Hadley. Meanwhile, Ernest was creating a ménage a trois with another St. Louis native--Hadley was a St. Louis girl herself --Pauline Pfeiffer, editor at Paris Vogue, a woman whose name has gone down in villainy for breaking up the marriage. (Hemingway's third wife Martha Gellhorn, a noted journalist at the time, was also a St. Louis native: it must have been something in the water of the Mississippi.)

The author gives us an interesting look at all these women:" Among expatriates in literary circles, there was a prejudice against women who were merely `wives'--a term ... that `applied not just to legal spouses, but to all women who attached themselves to a dominant partner.' Many of the `wives' like Stella Bowen [who lived with T.S. Eliot] and Ada MacLeish, a singer, had careers of their own. Those who didn't have talent and ambition nevertheless often adopted the trappings of artistic freedom, the most destructive of which...'was the freedom to explore erotic and emotional relationships outside marriage.'" Hadley was a devoted mother and wife, "a conventional woman surrounded by hedonists, who...'flaunted their promiscuity and joked about their abortions and venereal disease.'"

At any rate, the Hemingways had a passionate, affectionate marriage. Hadley was always faithful to her husband, and those who knew the couple thought Hemingway was always faithful to her, until Pauline came into the picture. And, in the posthumously published A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition, Hemingway said, "I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her." The Chicago-based Diliberto frequently mentions the solid Midwestern values of Hadley and Hem. But Hadley was from St. Louis, and Hem from Chicago. Wouldn't these be considered major urban metro areas?

The author did a great deal of research to produce this work, Scores of interviews with those who knew the prime actors, she says, including the couple's son Jack, formerly known as Bumby, in his home in Ketchum, Idaho, Hemingway's last home. And Hadley's nieces Dodie Hess and Fonchen Lord; her nephew Richard Usher. Furthermore, the writer found many hours of tapes made of conversations between Hadley and her friend, musician/writer Alice Sokoloff, who published the first, timid biography of Hadley, while she was still alive. Finally, the author had first look at more than 1,000 letters written by Hadley to Hem during their intense courtship: the famous man held on to them all his life. Although sometimes the extensive quotes from these materials are repetitive, and hold up, rather than advance, the narrative. Diliberto is the author of the biographies A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams (Lisa Drew Books) and Debutante: The Story of Brenda Frazier, and the historical novels I Am Madame X: A Novel and The Collection: A Novel. I liked this book much better than Paula Mc Lain's recent fictional The Paris Wife: A Novel, which was apparently inspired by it: it gives us a much deeper, more detailed picture of the woman at the center of one of the great literary storms of the 20th century. Worth reading, perhaps even for those not Hemingway fans.

I really enjoyed this book. Earlier this year, I read Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and was introduced to Hadley Richardson, Hemingway's first wife. A Moveable Feast tells of Ernest, Hadley, and their son (called Bumby) living in Paris as ex-pats. The book was published posthumously and gives a very positive picture of the Hemingways' marriage and time among the literary elite in the salons of Paris.

This book covers Hadley's entire life from growing up in St. Louis to her courtship with a handsome, young Hemingway to marriage and the birth of her son to Hemingway's infidelity to their divorce to the rest of her life. There was so much going on during this time period with regard to women and their role that it was really fascinating to learn more about this women who was right there as her husband wrote some of his great works. Hadley is of course fascinating in her own right and it was very interesting to see where she came from and why she was the way that she was.

The honest truth is had Hadley not married Hemingway, she would probably not have been worthy of study. But she was married to this formidable writer and sometimes we can't reach our whole potential without having a great support system and Hadley was that for Hemingway as Paris Without End shows. She really pushed him to write and to be involved with the literary world. She also inspired some of his works and characters. This isn't to say that Hemingway would not have become a great writer if Hadley hadn't been behind him but it is way more difficult to reach an already difficult goal if you don't have someone supporting you and cheering you on as Hadley did for Ernest.

Diliberto does a great job of pulling the reader into Hadley's story. The book is very accessible and often reads like fiction for those that don't like to venture into non-fiction or biographies very often. Hemingway fans will definitely appreciate this book but even if you aren't really a die hard Hemingway fan, this is still a great biography of one of the women behind one of the most well known and beloved American writers of all time.

Bottom line: History buffs, Hemingway lovers, and biography fans will all find much to love about this book!

Gioia Diliberto's biography of Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first wife, is a wonderful narrative of the Nobel Prize winner's muse. It is well-documented with 40 pages of notes detailing specific citations of information, many of them from primary sources. A 14 page index provides locations devoted to all the major figures in the enduring love story. There is a "conversation" with the author and a reader's guide is provided.

Hadley and the younger Ernest were high energy young adults when they were married, each influenced for a lifetime by their Midwestern family upbringing. Both enjoyed outdoor activities (hiking) and sports (skiing). They also developed habits of drinking, and smoking in Hadley's case, that increased as they went from economic hardship to affluence. Hadley was a drinking partner for Ernest during their 5 years of marriage, and this contributed to the novelty and fun of moving from the US to living in Europe. Both were able to party every night and still get up in the morning full of energy and enthusiasm. Ernest had a focal point of writing and Hadley supported this without a meaningful one of her own.

I found in Paris Without End that there were positive factors in the intense relationship between Hadley and Ernest that support the idea that Hadley was a muse for him. These positives became overshadowed by negatives as the marriage began to unravel. First, dependence on alcohol was a major influence on the marriage and Ernest's writing. This can be observed in the nostalgia concerning the relationship Ernest described so eloquently in A Moveable Feast. In addition to short stories written during the cafe life Paris years, The Sun Also Rises was completed during the early years of the marriage. It is a novel focusing on partying and complicated relationships of expatriate friends mirroring Hadley and Ernest's activities. The young couple definitely lived the high life with little money required in Paris, fueled by alcohol. The problem with this is that drinking took its destructive toll even though the two were remarkably resilient.

A second positive is that Hadley was a good sport. She went along with Ernest's desire for traveling and his efforts to meet as many writers and artists as possible. A common misinterpretation is that Hadley was a drag on Ernest's hypomanic interests. The truth is just the opposite. She participated in Hemingway's constant movement and interaction even though she was marginalized by the artistic crowd because she did not have a creative focal point of her own. Oddly enough, Hadley was a very good piano player, an artist in her own right, who appeared to have stage fright. She could practice for hours but then backed out of concerts when it came time to perform.

A third positive that backs the idea that Hadley was a muse was her support for Ernest's writing. Even though his style was ground-breaking and changed the direction of literature, it was not well-received at first. His early short stories were rejected many times. Hadley read all of his work and suggested that he write in a straight-forward minimalist style cutting out the embellishments of contemporary writers. This was very helpful to Ernest's persistence in establishing his unique approach to story telling. An unexpected problem in this area had a major influence in the decline of their relationship. Ernest earned money during the rejection period by working as a correspondent for newspapers. On one assignment when the couple were separated, Ernest asked Hadley to join him on location. Hadley gathered up all of Ernest's work in progress (including the carbon copies) and took a train from Paris to meet him. The bag containing the manuscripts was stolen, and almost all of the work was lost. Ernest forgave Hadley, but the lack of trust in her seemed to decrease Ernest's love for her in a permanent way.

The last positive was Hadley's pregnancy, a great surprise for both of them, even though they were aware of a time of carelessness in their birth control methods that allowed for the conception. The birth of their son gave Hadley a focus of her own that she had not had during early part of the marriage. Hadley had mostly given up practicing her piano playing. Both Hadley and Ernest loved "Bumby" very much and delighted in his early development. As with the other three positives, this turned to a negative influence when Bumby became ill and had to be quarantined. This led to Hadley reducing her social and physical activity to some extent while Ernest seemed to increase his drinking and socializing. This restriction of Hadley's movements and interaction may have opened the door enough for the journalist Pauline Pfeiffer, Ernest's second wife, to compete with Hadley and eventually win him over.

Ernest's work was a constant focus, but Hadley's roll as muse seemed to diminish over time. It is clear, though, that Hadley had a lasting effect on Ernest's best writing. His 3 greatest works (The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls) are partly love stories that reflect Ernest's attitude toward love and marriage he developed during his 5 year marriage to Hadley. Gioia Diliberto's book is a biography that reads like a novel. The factual account, however, is reliable and valid with a minimum of speculation. For readers who like learning about the lives of great writers, I highly recommend that they read this interesting and enjoyable book.

I bought this book after having heard that much of the (to my mind, over rated) "The Paris Wife" derived from it. Still, my interest had been piqued by TPW enough that I wanted to learn more. It doesn't matter that it was written 20 years ago, facts are still facts.

I found this much more interesting than TPW but it didn't do much for my respect for Ernest Hemingway. What a self-centered, pity-party jerk---very much like the caricature in the movie "Midnight in Paris." Hadley was well rid of him. But a couple of things struck me, re our changing value system: one, that no one seemed to have much to do except drink and wander aimlessly; the 'golden age' was actually rather boring. Second, poor little Bumby was pretty neglected, even to his father handing him over to a train porter to take back to Paris at one point. Time after time Hadley and Ernest plopped him with someone so they could go off for a month or two, in spite of their declarations about how much they loved him. Later in an interview he admitted he didn't see much of them while growing up. Well, at least when he grew up he got rid of that moniker "Bumby." It's revealing that Ernest kept calling him that even when he asked him not to.

The question of the lost manuscripts will always be a mystery. But I seem to be reviewing the characters, not the book, and that isn't fair. The author did a very good and thorough job of tracking down just about everything in Hadley's life. Oddly, I found her life before she took up with Ernest to be more interesting, at least as a mirror of what was going on in American society at the time, and what women's options and concerns were. She was born at the tail end of the Victorian era but was an adult in the Jazz age---interesting transition.

Enthusiastically recommended for anyone who wants to know more about the era and the young Hemingway.

I recently read a book about Hemingway's third wife Martha Gellhorn and was curious about Hadley Richardson. Long after Hemingway was out of the picture, a relative knew Hadley and her second husband Paul Mowrer when they were neighbors in suburban Chicago. Nothing much was said about the Mowrers, but I was admittedly curious about the first of many Mrs. Hemingways.
This is an interesting book that captures the era of the '20's and appears to be as detailed and factual as one might get considering this wasn't written by Hadley Mowrer herself. It portrays their somewhat vagabond existence in Paris with friends as well as supporting players such as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gerald and Sara Murphy, and the odd couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. As they take off on adventures, sometimes leaving their son Jack (aka Bumby) in the care of others, this book records the gradual disintegration of a marriage as well as a creative coupling as Hadley was Hemingway's greatest supporter. In the end the marriage takes a final blow when Hemingway inevitably picks up with Pauline Pfeifer who becomes his second wife.
While Hemingway plays a main role in this book, it is Hadley and their relationship which drives this book.
I enjoyed this book and thought it did an excellent job of portraying the lost generation through the lives and relationship of two people and captures the creative environment for that generation of American ex-pat writers.

In the early 1920s, a group of artistic and literary types congregated in Paris, forming a community of expatriates.
Hadley and Ernest Hemingway were among them.

They had met in the Midwest, in Chicago, after Hadley left her childhood home in St. Louis. They were drawn to each other immediately.

For Hadley, Ernest offered a boost to her battered self-esteem, after a troubled childhood in which she was the least favored daughter. To Ernest, Hadley represented the kind of calm and inspiration which he was seeking.

Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife (P.S.) delves into the early years of their lives together, and how those were the years that defined Hemingway as a literary giant. His struggles were many, but he didn't give up. For years afterwards, long after he and Hadley had separated, their fondness for one another lived on, reminding them of that time in their lives. Toward the end of the book, this excerpt sums up that time:

"'A Moveable Feast' lovingly delineates the quiet, peaceful world Ernest and Hadley had created in their Paris flat. `Like Huck Finn's river, the apartment over the sawmill is a place of renewal and purification. Hadley is both lover and mother, their Paris a garden and playground,' wrote Arthur Edelstein in a review of the book. The love story transcends the personal and seems to symbolize the dreams of the jazz era generation."

As I read this detailed biography of a unique time in the lives of both Hadley and Ernest, I was drawn to the richness of their lives, despite the many challenges. Money was not plentiful, but the two of them found many ways to enjoy their lives together.

And their lives were full of the joy of youth and the promise of a future.

Even though their lives did not turn out the way they'd planned, and, in fact, great sadness and loss would occur in later years, the memories of their idyllic time in Paris illuminated their lives in memorable ways. Five stars.

...for persons interested in some of the major influences on Ernest Hemmingway's fiction and equally so for readers who are interested in the important roles of women, mothers and wives in the Twentieth Century. For this last group of readers, the work stands well as an example of femminist and post-femminist scholarship.

First and foremost, this book is wonderfully and sensitively written, scrupulously researched and full of personal insights into Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemmningway and into their married life in Paris between World War I and World War II. Any person who has enjoyed reading A Moveable Feast will find amplification and greater understanding of its events and times by spending a few pleasurable hours with this book. This is also a 'Coming of Age' story: both Hadley and Hemmingway are breaking out of rigid family backgrounds and finding broad horizons to discover together. This is a brief time in any lives and readers will find much to reflect on through their experiences in being a young couple making a life together--plus they are doing this in Paris as members of one of its most famous expatriate literary and artistic circles!

Perhaps the best succinct summary of what this book is about can be pieced together from the author's introduction: "...Hadley went from being an enervated spinster, melancholy and afraid of life, to a vibrant young woman [well--she was twenty-eight; not so-o-o young. JE], eager for new experience. Before he met Hadley, Ernest had been unable to focus his energies...The man Hadley cherished was a somewhat shy midwestern boy, inexperienced in life and eager to make his mark...With her (Ernest) discovered his artistic identity and developed his full range of talents." This book details on a personal level how all of this came about. It benefits from something like 70 hours of tapes Hadley made in later life in interviews with an earlier writer and of the release of personal correspondence between the couple. I found this book to be 'the real deal'in readable, fascinating scholarship and in the telling of some of the major parts of two lives of two interesting people.

This book is being re-released for the 50th Anniversary of Hemmingway's suicide, as part of a campaign to bring his work to another generation. It is published by Harper Perennial; another sign of its worthiness to remain before the public. Try to find Ms. Diliberto's book, "Hadley" in its 1992 edition: good luck! I feel that 'Paris Without End' should have been the book's original title anyway because it is about an iconic period in both Hadley's and Hemmingway's life and it was a time that Hemmingway found himself returning to at the end of his life when he was working on 'A Moveable Feast.' There does not seem to be a better companion to 'A Moveable Feast' than this book and that more than justifies its second release (with a new introduction by the author).

This thoroughly researched book offers a candid look at the life of Ernest Hemingway's muse. His first wife Hadley was at his side during his most pivotal and prolific years as a young man, full of vitality and creativity. Together, Hem and Hadley experienced the boom of the Lost Generation's self-imposed exile in Paris, where art flourished and wine flowed. Hadley was, by necessity, a constant calm in Ernest's life as he struggled to make a name for himself. She endured his escalating success and thus his growing ego, which eventually caused their marriage to deteriorate. Throughout it all, Hadley is portrayed as courageous and sturdy.

Diliberto does a phenomenal job utilizing a vast amount of sources to capture Hadley's voice and personality. Considering her unhappy childhood, it is a wonder Hadley ever escaped the suffocating confines of her life in St. Louis. Her mother instilled such a feeling of inadequacy in Hadley, it was practically debilitating. But then she meets Ernest and her emergence from her insecurity is like a fairy tale. The details of their existence, their travels throughout Europe, and their celebrated circle of friends are so well documented through letters and unpublished sketches. Reading this book is like being transported back to the streets of Paris in the 20's. Hadley was a remarkable woman and Diliberto captures her essence with admiration and dignity.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author.

A sad, beautiful look at one of our greatest writers, Ernest Hemingway, and his devoted wife Hadley, who nurtured his talent. Not only does the author give us a fascinating glimpse of Paris in the 20's, filled with such characters as Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, James and Nora Joyce, and many other famous expatriates, but she takes you behind the scenes of a marriage filled with passion and hope, and how it was destroyed by Hemingway's dalliance with one of Hadley's "best" friends. It's all here, how Hadley's unselfish belief in Ernest's talent, often at the sublimation of her own considerable gifts, helped him to become the writer he was, and her agony when she lost his manuscripts, including the only copy of his first novel. Their's was an impetuous romance that ended tragically, and even though Hemingway went on to other women, including three more wives, as he said in "A Moveable Feast" Hadley was the only woman he ever truly loved.

Gioia Diliberto's re-release of her meticulously researched, deeply sensitive and moving biography of Hadley Richardson reads like a Hemingway novel, filled with description and conversational tidbits from the people themselves, and with the ever present cloud of tragedy and death lurking, as it does in many peoples' true lives, just below the small talk.

As Hemingway's first son, and Hadley's only child, notes in it, it was probably good for Hadley that Hemingway left her when he did. And it was probably bad for Hemingway, as the writer himself noted in his memoir of his youth in Paris, "A Moveable Feast."

"Paris Without End" paints a well-rounded portrait of a true muse, an artistic ideal of a woman who is equally supportive and opinionated, loving and critical, lover and friend, mother and sister, spouse and girl friend.

To set the scene, Diliberto takes you to Hadley's origins, in St. Louis. The same origins, we learn, as all but the last of Hemingway's four wives. In fact, she quotes a Hemingway note to Hadley long after their divorce, and his divorce from Pauline Pfeiffer, and his divorce from Martha Gelhorn--whose father was, we learn, Hadley's gynecologist--indicating that you'd think he'd try to marry someone who wasn't from St. Louis.

I won't rehash the wealth of detail revealed in this excellent biography, which I consider equally and easily on a par with Amanda Vaill's "Everybody Was So Young," about the financial backers of the "Lost Generation," a phrase Hemingway brought into the lexicon by quoting Gertrude Stein's comment about his generation.

But I will suggest if "Midnight in Paris" made you curious, and you want to feel like you're hopping aboard that beautiful Lincoln limousine to peer into the private life of a man who many believe changed at least American literature from the adorned writing of Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, you should buy this book.

And, you should read it.

Touching and true, this story of Hadley's life tells us so much about Hemingway. Although, after their separation, Hemingway probably over-romanticized their time together, it is apparent that Hadley was an inspiration to Hemingway and his writing that could never be matched. She was rock-solid steady which can seem boring given the temptations of glamour, high-life and seduction. His zest for life and the fact that he felt such a passionate happiness with her when they started a life together, gave her a rebirth and the life-long gift of confidence for which she always credited him. Despite their separation, neither regretted their time together, and both were thankful to have experienced their wonderful few years. Hadley's influence on him is apparent right into his final writings. Guess it is time to read A Moveable Feast, but will need to dry the tears first.

Now that I have JUST finished "Paris Without End", I am spreading the word on how great IT is. I had read "The Paris Wife", and really liked it. It was almost like reading a diary. I thought this was a more personal book than the other. It seemed like I was traveling through her life with her. All the ups and downs along the way. She was a special lady and I liked getting to know her. I would recommend it to all of my friends and family and anyone else that is a Hemingway fan. I must say, however, that I am liking Ernest less with each book I read. He treated the women in his life so badly!

I bought the Kindle edition of this book. Every few pages there were words/pages missing. I was still able to 'read' the beginning, but returned it because the store shouldn't charge $10 for a book with quality issues. I definitely plan on buying the actual book.