Mr._and_Mrs._Elliot

Mr. and Mrs. Elliot

Mr. and Mrs. Elliot

Short story by Ernest Hemingway

"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story was first published in The Little Review in 1924 and republished by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's first American volume of short stories, In Our Time, in 1925.[1]

Ernest Hemingway in 1923

The story is about a 25-year-old Harvard student who follows a "clean" life. He marries a 40-year-old clean Southern woman in Boston and the next day they set off to Europe and they 'try very hard to have a baby'. They travel to Paris, then Dijon and finally at a chateau in Touraine. Eventually both become disenchanted with each other, and the wife's girlfriend moves in to live with her.[1]

The story was initially titled "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" when it first appeared in The Little Review; it was reputedly based on the 1921-4 marriage of writer Chard Powers Smith and his wife Olive Macdonald.[2] Smith resented Hemingway's story for the rest of his life.[3]

References

  1. [1]
    Oliver (1999), 228
  2. [2]
    Baker, Carlos (1969). "Ernest Hemingway and the Little Magazines: The Paris Years by Nicholas Joost". American Literature. 40 (4): 527–574. Retrieved 14 March 2023.
  3. [3]
    https://archives.yale.edu/agents/people/67487 Chard Powers Smith papers, Yale University

Sources

  • Baker, Carlos. American Literature, vol. 40, no. 4, 1969, pp. 572–74. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2923238. Accessed 14 Mar. 2023.
  • Hemingway, Ernest. (1925/1930) In Our Time. (1996 ed.) New York: Scribner. ISBN 0-684-82276-8
  • Oliver, Charles (1999). Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work. New York: Checkmark Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8160-3467-3
  • Tetlow, Wendolyn E. (1992). Hemingway's "In Our Time": Lyrical Dimensions. Cranbury NJ: Associated University Presses. ISBN 978-0-8387-5219-7


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