Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn's Letters of Love and War 1930-1949 - Paperback

by Janet Somerville (Author)

"An engrossing collection that burnishes Gellhorn's reputation as an astute observer, insightful writer, and uniquely brave woman."
-- Kirkus starred review)

"This carefully curated collection ... reveals the exciting life of a brilliant woman whose work paved the way for many who followed behind her."
-- The Globe and Mail

"What a pleasure reading her correspondence and being reminded of how beautifully she wrote, filled with passion and insight."
-- Azar Nafisi

"An essential book ... Janet Somerville has done a marvelous job with marvelous material. Bravo."
-- Ward Just

Martha Gellhorn was a strong-willed, self-made, modern woman whose journalism, and life, were widely influential at the time and cleared a path for women who came after her. An ardent anti-fascist, she abhorred "objectivity shit" and wrote about real people doing real things with intelligence and passion. She is most famous, to her enduring exasperation, as Ernest Hemingway's third wife. Long after their divorce, her short tenure as "Mrs. Hemingway" from 1940 to 1945 invariably eclipsed her writing and, consequently, she never received her full due.

Yours, for Probably Always is a curated collection of letters between Gellhorn and the extraordinary personalities that were her correspondents in the most interesting time of her life. Through these letters and the author's contextual narrative, the book covers Gellhorn's life and work, including her time reporting for Harry Hopkins and America's Federal Emergency Relief Administration in the 1930s, her newspaper and magazine reportage during the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Vietnam War, and her relationships with Hemingway and General James M. Gavin late in the war, and her many lovers and affairs.

Gellhorn's life, reportage, fiction and correspondence reveal her passionate advocacy of social justice and her need to tell the stories of "the people who were the sufferers of history." Renewed interest in her life makes this collection, packed with newly discovered letters and pictures, fascinating reading.

Author Biography

Janet Somerville taught literature for 20 years in Toronto. Since 2015, she has been wholly immersed in Martha Gellhorn's life and words, privileged to have ongoing access to Gellhorn's restricted papers in Boston, Massachusetts.