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

Janet Somerville (Editor)

4.43 · Rating details · 21 ratings · 14 reviews

(starred review) Somerville makes an impressive book debut with a life of novelist, journalist, and intrepid war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998), told through a captivating selection of her letters to friends, family, husbands, and lovers. The volume is enriched by Somerville's biographical narrative and her decision to include responses of many recipients and, (starred review) Somerville makes an impressive book debut with a life of novelist, journalist, and intrepid war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998), told through a captivating selection of her letters to friends, family, husbands, and lovers. The volume is enriched by Somerville's biographical narrative and her decision to include responses of many recipients and, in some cases, letters between individuals who were especially significant in Gellhorn's life... An engrossing collection that burnishes Gellhorn's reputation as an astute observer, insightful writer, and uniquely brave woman. --Kirkus, July 08, 2019

"A titan of American letters. It's high time for Gellhorn to emerge from the shadows of twentieth-century literature into the bright light of mainstream recognition." --The Washington Post Book World (on Martha Gelhorn)

Before email, when long distance telephone calls were difficult and expensive, people wrote letters, often several each day. Today, those letters provide an intimate and revealing look at the lives and loves of the people who wrote them. When the author is a brilliant writer who lived an exciting, eventful life, the letters are especially interesting.

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.

Gellhorn's work and personal life attracted a disparate cadre of political and celebrity friends, among them, Sylvia Beach, Ingrid Bergman, Leonard Bernstein, Norman Bethune, Robert Capa, Charlie Chaplin, Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Chiang, Colette, Gary Cooper, John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Maxwell Perkins, Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry, Orson Welles, H.G. Wells -- the people who made history in her time and beyond.

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 fiction of the time sold well: The Trouble I've Seen (1936) -- her Depression-Era stories based on the FERA activities, with an introduction by H.G. Wells; A Stricken Field (1940) -- a novel inspired by the German-Jewish refugee crisis and set in 1938 Czechoslovakia; The Heart of Another (1941) -- stories edited by Maxwell Perkins; and The Wine of Astonishment (1948) -- her novel about the liberation of Dachau, which she reported for Collier's.

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 new collection, packed with newly discovered letters and pictures, fascinating reading. ...more

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Hardcover, 528 pages

Published September 27th 2019 by Firefly Books

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Sep 06, 2019 Literary Soirée rated it it was amazing

Shelves: autobiography-biography-memoir, history, netgalley-review, reviewed

Martha Gellhorn is most famously known as Hemingway’s third wife. But she was a pioneer war correspondent — the only woman to land at Normandy on D-Day and among the first to report from Dachau after its liberation by US troops.

Yours, for Probably Always, is a superb collection of her letters, with insightful background by author Janet Somerville.

Gellhorn corresponded with the best and brightest of the day, including close friend Eleanor Roosevelt, with a huge number of their letters included. ...more

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Jul 12, 2019 Samantha rated it really liked it

An interesting collection of Martha Gellhorn’s correspondence, interspersed with biographical detail for context.

For the most part, this is a worthy selection of correspondence that provides greater insight into Gellhorn’s life as seen through her own eyes and those of her correspondents.

This is a denser read than most compilations of personal letters, and that’s a good thing. This is partially due to the substance, tone, and beautiful writing that mark out Gellhorn’s missives as different An interesting collection of Martha Gellhorn’s correspondence, interspersed with biographical detail for context.

For the most part, this is a worthy selection of correspondence that provides greater insight into Gellhorn’s life as seen through her own eyes and those of her correspondents.

This is a denser read than most compilations of personal letters, and that’s a good thing. This is partially due to the substance, tone, and beautiful writing that mark out Gellhorn’s missives as different from much of the frippery we usually see in collected letters. The fact that she had so many pen pals who were themselves impressive personages and compelling writers didn’t hurt either.

As is often the case with correspondence collections, the volume of writing included between select parties is largely determined by what was available to the compiler. This sometimes (and is the case here) provides quantities of letters with certain correspondents that don’t seem to have the quality required to justify that.

In this book, there is a huge number of exchanges between Gellhorn and Eleanor Roosevelt. While Roosevelt is of course a fascinating woman in her own right and certainly there is good information to be gleaned from letters between the two, their exchanges are mostly personal fondness and were clearly included in the book in such large volume because said large volume was readily available, rather than because they really needed to be there.

Conversely, while many of Martha’s letters to Hemingway appear in the book, there is but one letter from Hemingway to Gellhorn included. This is likely because of three things: Gellhorn returning much of Hemingway’s half of their correspondence to him upon their divorce in 1945, the fact that many of their letters were likely heavily censored because they were written during the war, and that Gellhorn zealously destroyed much of the correspondence between she and Hemingway shortly before her death.

None of this is the fault of the author of this book, who did well with what she had to work with. Still, it’s a good lesson in why compilations of correspondence often don’t truly give the full picture of the subject’s life. In this case, the author did an admirable job of making up the difference with the biographical information interspersed with the letters throughout the text.

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.* ...more

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Dec 03, 2019 Bob H rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, history, military-history, literary-history, social-history

This is a candid, vibrant encounter with a warm, intelligent and remarkable personality. This is Martha Gellhorn, through her correspondence with her friends and lovers but speaking to us now, as she lives through some of the most turbulent times and scenes of the mid-20th Century. A pioneer in many ways, she reported on, wrote about, lived through the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War and continued reporting through the Vietnam era, although this book mainly spans the ...more

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Feb 11, 2020 Brock rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

This is an engrossing and deeply enjoyable book. I knew very little about Martha Gellhorn before reading this, but have become a strong admirer of this intelligent, engaging, vibrant woman. Through her letters to friends, lovers, and colleagues we not only discover her character and learn about her passion for documenting the world as truthfully as she could, but also how connected she was to some of the most important events and influential people of the 20th century. Also, it is almost ...more

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Dec 29, 2019 Kat Ayres rated it it was amazing

To be honest, when I requested this book, I knew little to nothing about Martha Gellhorn. What I found was a total badass. She was such a fantastic representative of early-ish feminine independence and strength. She paved a way for modern feminists to really live boldly. I was really inspired reading her correspondence and learning about her life, and I can’t wait to live my life a little more boldly. I’d like to think if we had been born in the same time and ran in the same circles, we would ...more

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Nov 08, 2019 Susan rated it it was amazing

I devoured every page. If you didn’t love Martha Gellhorn before, you will after reading this book.

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Nov 27, 2019 Kate rated it it was amazing

Shelves: bio

I love this book. With that said, I doubt everyone will love this book, so let me tell you about it.

Martha Gellhorn was a noted war journalist and writer who wrote about the Spanish Civil War, the invasion of Prague, and many campaigns during WWII. She continued reporting on wars zone up the Vietnam era. She was a passionate person who could not bear injustice, and hence was constantly emotionally wrecked by each new atrocity. She is also a marvellously descriptive writer, both of emotion and ...more

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Dec 21, 2019 Schmimmerock rated it really liked it

Shelves: bios-and-memoirs, history, nonfiction, netgalley

If there are only two things I have in common with Ernest Hemingway, it's that I hate Ernest Hemingway, and I love Martha Gellhorn. It's really a shame that so many people only know her as Hemingway's wife, because that's a massive disservice to Martha Gellhorn the writer, Martha Gellhorn the traveller, Martha Gellhorn the journalist and war correspondent.

What a seriously cool lady, you guys.

I appreciated the contextual bits amongst the letters. As with any collection of letters, there are ...more

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Sep 16, 2019 Susanne rated it liked it

Shelves: netgalley, 2019

Thank you to Firefly Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Martha Gellhorn is a fascinating figure, and this compilation of her correspondence gives us a bit of insight into her personal life. What she is most famous for, i.e. being Ernest Hemingway's third wife, and being one of the first female war correspondents, doesn't merit much attention here. Instead, there is quite a lot of material on her relationship to her parents, and to Eleanor Roosevelt. However, much of ...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Sara rated it really liked it

Martha Gellhorn lead an amazing life travelling the world as a war correspondent, journalist and author. This book chronicles her life through the letters she wrote and many that she received. Sommerville uses just the right amount of narration between the letters to keep the book on track and to set the scene. I found this to be a long book, but worth it. Through her letters, you can see Gellhorn’s passion for travel, people and writing about the important events of the day. Yes, she was ...more

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Dec 22, 2019 Karenna rated it really liked it

Shelves: collectible, signed

Fascinating to read the correspondence of an extraordinary woman during extraordinary times. Somerville does a great job summarizing the essential events in Gellhorn’s life as well as curating the letters so that you finish the book with a real sense of Gellhorn and her era. I also appreciated that Somerville included one of Gellhorn’s short stories. It really provided me with a sense of Gellhorn’s literary style and talent. Finally, Firefly did a wonderful job of producing the book. Its beauty ...more

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Jan 01, 2020 Lynda Lippin rated it really liked it

Journalist Martha Gellhorn tried to control her entire life, even when she couldn't. She was married to Ernest Hemingway, embedded with troops in WWII, and visited Dachau right after the liberation. These years of correspondence are not all so interesting, but in total tell a great story of a fascinating woman.

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