Hemingway's Guns: The Sporting Arms of Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway’s friend A.E. Hotchner once described a “yellowed four-by-five picture of Ernest,” shown him by Hemingway, “aged five or six, holding a small rifle. Written on the back in his mother’s hand was the notation, ‘Ernest was taught to shoot by Pa when 2½ and when 4 could handle a pistol.’”Firearms and shooting infused Hemingway’s existence and thus his writing. He was a member of his high-school gun club and went to war when he was eighteen. He hunted elk, deer, and bear in the American west and went on two extended African safaris, which figured hugely in his writing and changed his life. To the day of his death, Hemingway remained an avid hunter, first-class wingshot, and capable rifleman.Following years of research from Sun Valley to Key West and from Nairobi, Kenya to Hemingway’s home in Cuba, this volume significantly expands what we know about Hemingway’s shotguns, rifles, and pistols—the tools of the trade that proved themselves in his hunting, target shooting, and in his writing. Weapons are some of our most culturally and emotionally potent artifacts. The choice of gun can be as personal as the car one drives or the person one marries; another expression of status, education, experience, skill, and personal style. Including short excerpts from Hemingway’s works, these stories of his guns and rifles tell us much about him as a lifelong expert hunter and shooter and as a man.

A writer, editor, and publisher for more than 30 years, Silvio Calabi lives on the coast of Maine and hunts around the world. Roger Sanger, from California and Idaho, is an aficionado of fine guns and the founder of the California Side By Side Society. Steve Helsley, also from California, is a consultant to the National Rifle Association and a firearms historian and photographer. They have collaborated on many articles for shooting magazines and they founded and produced the Gold Medal Concours d’Elegance of Fine Guns and the Western Side By Side Championships.