<p>Few twentieth-century American writers have been as influential as Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). Whilst contemporaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner may be as widely taught and studied as Hemingway, neither had an influence on other writers -- or indeed, the cognate arts -- as great as that of Hemingway. For example, the 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction extending from the novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett to those of James Ellroy and Robert Parker is more or less inconceivable without Hemingway's stylistic influence. Arguably, film noir is also Hemingwayesque in its laconic detachment. And quite independently of his creative writings, Hemingway's life continues to exert a profound fascination for both student and the general reader.</p>
