An unscathed tourist of wars: the journalism of Martha Gellhorn

Better known now as a war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn yearned for critical success as a novelist. From the Spanish Civil War, through World War Two to Vietnam, Gellhorn ‘bore witness’ to all the major global conflicts between the 1930s and 1980s. This chapter outlines the life and work of this pioneering journalist and looks at the ways in which her work as a reporter influenced her fiction writing, but considers how as a writer she could not escape the associations with one-time husband Ernest Hemingway.