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    Martha Gellhorn.: Childhood and Early Life

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    Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career

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    Martha Gellhorn.: Childhood and Early Life

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    satya
    165 views3 pages
    Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career

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    Martha Gellhorn

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    Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career

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    165 views3 pages

    Martha Gellhorn.: Childhood and Early Life

    Uploaded by

    satya
    Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career

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    MARTHA GELLHORN.

    Martha Ellis Gellhorn, apart from being a novelist, a travel writer and a journalist was one of the
    most influential and distinguished war reporters of the 20 th century who covered every war that
    occurred around the globe over a period extending nearly 60 years. She was fearless, completely
    undaunted by the dangers of whatever armed conflict she waded into. Martha, the first ever female
    war correspondent who was American by birth, didn’t just write but wandered about the things. She
    followed the war wherever it could reach. Gellhorn was a blustery reporter who could go to any
    length to get a story — she stowed away on a hospital ship and snuck ashore as a stretcher bearer
    during the D-Day landings at Normandy, she accompanied British pilots on night bombing raids over
    Germany and even followed Allied troops when they liberated Dachau. Unlike other reporters her
    energy reserves in the later part of her career seemed inexhaustible. Even at the age of 81 in 1989,
    she was reporting from the front lines of the United States’ invasion of Panama. Yet she is also
    remembered for her brief marriage to American Noble Prize winner Ernest Hemingway. The six
    decades she covered, she worked on a dozen wars and drew admiration for her fictional work.

    CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE.


     Martha Gellhorn was born on November 8, 1908 in St. Louis, Missouri to Edna Fischel
    Gellhorn, a suffragist and George Gellhorn, a gynaecologist. She was of Jewish origin. Her
    brothers, Walter Gellhorn and Alfred Gellhorn were also well-known personalities; Walter
    was a renowned law professor at Columbia University and Alfred was an oncologist.
     She studied at John Burroughs School in St. Louis and later joined Bryn Mawr College,
    Philadelphia, in 1926. Soon, she left the graduation course to pursue a career in journalism.
    American magazine 'The New Republic' featured her maiden articles.
     Resolute to become an international reporter, she travelled to Paris in 1930 where she
    worked at the United Press Bureau. During this period, she became an active participant in
    the pacifist movement and recorded her experiences in the book 'What Mad Pursuit' (1934).

    CARRER
     Back in the United States, Martha Gellhorn was hired by Harry Hopkins as a field
    investigator for Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). She toured across
    the country to report on the effect of the Great Depression. Together with
    photographer Dorothea Lange, they documented the lives of poor and starving
    people. They also explored forbidden subjects in their investigation making them key
    contributors to American history.
     She met Earnest Hemingway in 1936 in Florida. Together, they travelled to Spain to
    report the Spanish Civil War. At that time, she was employed by Collier's Weekly.
     She reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Czechoslovakia. She
    recounted the war from other countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Burma, England,
    and Finland. She also described the activities of World War II in the novel 'A Stricken
    Field' (1940).
     Martha Gellhorn impersonated as a stretcher carrier to witness the Normandy
    landings on D-Day June 6, 1944; being the only woman to land at Normandy that
    day.
     She reported the Vietnam War and the Arab-Israel conflicts in the 1960s and 70s
    while working for the Atlantic Monthly. In the next decade she reported the Civil
    Wars in Central America.
     Before retiring from journalism due to advanced age, she successfully reported the
    US invasion of Panama in 1989. Unfortunately, an unsuccessful cataract surgery
    turned her near blind making her unfit to report the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s.
     Her last foreign assignment, a report on poverty, was in Brazil in 1995 and was
    published in the literary journal ‘Granta’. She completed this assignment with great
    difficulty because of her failing eye sight.

    MAJOR WORKS
     Her first book 'The Trouble I’ve Seen' (1936) regarding the impact of the great
    depression on the American people had a sensational response and was hugely
    successful.
     As a leading war correspondent, she authored several articles such as 'The Face
    of War' (1959) – an assortment of wartime writing and 'The View from the
    Ground' (1988) an assortment of peacetime essays. In between, she also
    authored 'Vietnam: A New Kind of War' (1966).
     Her journeys, including a voyage with Hemingway are described in 'Travels with
    Myself and Another: A Memoir' (1978).

    AWARDS AND ACHIVEMENTS


     Martha Gellhorn was the first lady to be honoured by the American government to be in the
    ‘American Journalist Stamp Series’ of 2008, along with five other men.
     The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism was posthumously established in 1999 in her
    memory where journalists from around the world were commemorated with an award each
    year for writing outstanding journalism content in English.

    PERSONAL LIFE AND LEGACY


     Martha Gellhorn had several love affairs, her first with French economist Bertrand de
    Jouvenel at the age of 22 which lasted for four years.
     She found true love when she met Ernest Hemingway in 1936 and marrying him
    1940, thus becoming his third wife. But they parted ways in 1945 since Martha didn’t
    like the fame associated with being his wife. She famously remarked that she had no
    intention of being a footnote in someone else's life.
     Martha then married to the former` managing editor of the Times Magazine TS
    Matthew in the year 1954. But neither did this last for long, only 11 years.
     In the year 1949 she adopted a baby boy but soon had sour relationship with her
    leading to a supposedly estranged mother-son relationship. Her adopted child was
    left with her relatives.
     Towards the end of her life she was almost blind, suffered from ovarian cancer and
    she felt the load of life so heavy that on February 15, 1998 in London at the age of 89
    she gave up her life by swallowing a cyanide capsule.
    TRIVA
     Martha Gellhorn was considered to be a women who was sexually manipulative
    and didn’t involve in physical relationships with her partners with her personal
    consent. She was also described as ‘conscientious’.
     Martha Gellhorn had homes in 19 different locations.

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