15 Pioneering Female Journalists
5. Martha Gellhorn
Yes, yes, Martha Gellhorn was the third wife of Ernest Hemingway. Let’s just get that off the table right now. Frankly, it’s just one of many, many events that made up an incredibly long career. That marriage only took up five years of her life.
Meanwhile, she became a journalist of such staggering renown that she’s now known as one of the best war correspondents of the 20th century (regardless of gender). Throughout her sixty-year career, Gellhorn reported on nearly every major conflict that came across the world stage.
After finishing her college degree, Gellhorn worked for two years at the United Press Bureau in Paris. She returned to the United States and began to report on the effects of the Great Depression in her home country. Gellhorn eventually collaborated with fellow journalist and famed photographer, Dorothea Lange.
Gellhorn met Hemingway while on vacation in key West. There, they agreed to travel together to Spain to cover the ongoing Spanish Civil War. She eventually reported on the rise of Hitler and the course of World War II. She was the only female correspondent to land on Normandy beach on D-Day in 1944. Gellhorn was also one of the first journalists to report from the Dachau concentration camp after it was liberated by Allied forces.
She married Hemingway in 1940. However, he eventually became critical of her career and typically tried to block her efforts to report. Gellhorn finally had enough and divorced him in 1945. She went on to cover numerous other conflicts, publish both nonfiction books and novels. Gellhorn proved to be a giant of journalism in her own right.