Timothy Christian graduated as a Commonwealth Scholar from King’s College, Cambridge. During a varied legal career, he served as a law professor and Dean at the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta and a visiting professor in Japan and Taiwan. Christian read A Moveable Feast in the cafes of Aix-en-Provence when he was a young man studying French. Realizing that no one had written deeply about Mary Welsh Hemingway, Christian began researching her story–and discovered a woman vital to Hemingway’s art. Christian is married to a lawyer and abstract artist, Kathryn Dykstra, and lives in a Mediterranean microclimate on Vancouver Island’s beautiful Saanich Inlet
"In Hemingway’s Widow, Christian brilliantly fills this
long-empty gap, presenting readers with lucid prose; meticulous
research; where warranted, cogent argument; where pertinent,
engagement with recent scholarship; and over 50 pages of endnotes.
One couldn’t wish for a better-researched, more readable
book; Hemingway’s Widow sets a new gold-standard in our
understanding of Mary Hemingway’s life and legacy."
*Dr. Hilary Justice, The Hemingway Review*
"More than any other biographer or historian so far, Christian
shows what a marvel Mary Welsh was to Hemingway in wartime London.
Petite and perky, a shrewd assessor of male vanity and pretensions,
this down-to-earth Midwesterner obtained plum assignments from
newspapers and magazines and sized up the military men who
befriended and courted her.”
*—The New Criterion*
"A vivid portrayal of Mary Walsh Hemingway. Christian
masterfully transports readers to Picasso's studio in Paris and to
the Ritz Bar where the couple drank with Jean-Paul Sartre and
Simone de Beauvoir.Christian regales readers with stories from
around the world, revealing the life of one of the most iconic
literary couples. He also chronicles Mary's illustrious journalism
career and her meetings with world leaders such as Fidel Castro and
John F. Kennedy, setting the record straight that Martha Gellhorn
was not the only respected reporter whom Hemingway married."
*The Minneapolis Star Tribune*
“Illuminating. I cannot imagine any biographer navigating
these waters better than Timothy Christian has done in
these pages. And I hope every student of Hemingway will pay
close attention and adjust accordingly their views of
Carlos Baker's biography of Hemingway. Again, I say this
book is a stunning achievement. It is the custom to
say that this volume belongs on the bookshelf
of every scholar and student and fan of Hemingway. And it
does. This includes Hemingway aficionados, who will
appreciate Timothy Christian's superb skills in
biography. This is the Hemingway book we've all been
waiting for so long.”
*H. R. Stoneback, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, The State
University of New York; President (past): The Ernest Hemingway
Foundation & Society*
"This compelling book transported me back to Hemingway’s world,
except this time his fourth and last wife Mary was guiding the
way. Hemingway aficionados will enjoy the journey. Hemingway
scholars will appreciate the detail, including some new
revelations, and the fresh analysis of her life and
legacy. Bottom line: an important book that fills a
long-standing gap and is a pleasure to read."
*Nick Reynolds, author of the New York Times bestseller 'Writer,
Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures,
1935-1961'*
"Timothy Christian has spent years researching Mary's
life across continents and every archive, including troves of
information that no one else has tapped. To this task, he
brought a sympathetic attachment to the woman behind the
Hemingway myth. He has turned up truly fresh and significant
information about Mary herself and her life before
Ernest, about the courtship and sexual predilections of
the couple, and about Ernest's suicide. While to some extent
this story will compromise the myth of the great macho
man that was important to Hemingway—a myth that Mary helped
craft and maintain—it will ultimately provide a fuller
understanding of an American icon and the lives he
touched. Refreshingly, Christian does not view Mary as a
victim, despite Ernest's callous and violent treatment of
the talented journalist who spent her prime years with
the aging and difficult master. Christian gives us Mary, a
tiny and fearless dynamo, a woman of skill and heart,
calculation and vulnerability, who knew exactly what she was
getting into when she married Ernest—and played her hands
as best as she could, even as her choices narrowed.”
*Carol Sklenicka, author of 'Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life' and
'Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer'*
“Sixty years after Hemingway's death, Christian sets the record
straight regarding Mary Hemingway's complex relationship with
Hemingway and his art during and after his final years. Often
stereotyped as accepting a sometimes abusive relationship, Mary
comes powerfully to life in this intricately nuanced and
mesmerizing biographical tour de force. Honest, unafraid and
compelling, Christian finally gives us the true gen.”
*Linda Patterson Miller, Author of 'Letters from the Lost
Generation' and Head of the Editorial Board, The Hemingway Letters
Project*
"Living with Hemingway could be downright treacherous, as the
journalist Mary Welsh would learn even before becoming the great
writer’s fourth and last wife. In this fast-paced,
drama-packed, and full-bodied biography, Timothy Christian has
given us the absolute true gem of a woman who sacrificed her
own identity while navigating a partnership forged by careless
love and deep darkness. Drawn from Mary Hemingway’s journals and
other previously untapped sources, Hemingway’s
Widow adds valuable new dimensions and insights to a story we
thought we already knew.”
*Steve Paul, author of Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That
Launched an American Legend"*
"Bravo to Tim Christian for creating a portrait of my friend Mary
Hemingway that at last shows her for the complex person she was—so
much more than an appendage of 'the great man.’ The author’s
astonishingly deep research into the vast archive of letters,
journals, memoirs, interviews allows him to put the fascinated
reader into Mary’s thoughts and feelings as she navigated the
sometimes glamourous and often treacherous shoals of life with
Ernest. This is a story that needed to be told and we are fortunate
that Tim Christian has told it so frankly, so sympathetically, and
so compellingly.”
*Susan Buckley, author of Eating with Peter*
"This portrait of Mary Welsh Hemingway documents her first
encounter with Ernest Hemingway while she was working as a wartime
correspondent and chronicles their tumultuous relationship, travels
around the world and her life after Hemingway’s suicide."
*The New York Times Book Review*
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