Gellhorn, Martha

(US, 1908–98)

Martha Gellhorn, one of the first female war correspondents, reported from the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and covered many of the twentieth century's major stories, continuing to write and travel until 1996. Her second husband was Ernest Hemingway, who features in Travels with Myself and Another (1978) as U.C.—‘unwilling companion’. Her detailed, evocative journalism is collected in three volumes, including The Face of War (1986). Gellhorn's early fiction centred on the American Depression, but her later novels are concerned with the effects of war as well as with issues of injustice and inequality. Begin with Liana (1944), set on a Caribbean island, which deals with the troubled marriage of a young local woman to an older Frenchman, depicting her affair with her tutor and its devastating resolution when war intrudes. Move on to A Stricken Field (1940), the story of Mary Douglas, an American journalist based in Czechoslovakia as the Nazis slowly approach.

Mavis Gallant, Ernest Hemingway  SR