The Sun Also Rises
How Harold appears in its pages: Once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton — the novel's opening line, and the outsider the whole crowd sharpens itself on.
Read the character guide- Author
- Editor
- Publisher
Harold Loeb
Editor of the modernist magazine Broom and a novelist in his own right — remembered instead as Robert Cohn, the character he spent the rest of his life answering.
Details
- 1891–1974
- 18 October 1891
- New York City
- 20 January 1974
- Marrakesh, Morocco
- American
- AuthorEditorPublisher
- Harold Albert Loeb
About Harold Loeb
Harold Loeb was born in New York in 1891 into money on both sides: his father was a banker, and his mother was a Guggenheim, which made Peggy Guggenheim his cousin. He took a degree at Princeton in 1913, worked in the family's mining and smelting business, and then left it for the literary life, running a Greenwich Village bookshop before founding Broom in 1921. It was one of the best-looking little magazines of the decade, printed in Rome and later Berlin, and it published Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and Man Ray while Loeb paid for much of it himself.
He met Ernest Hemingway in Paris and helped him: Loeb recommended Hemingway's early work to the publisher Boni & Liveright, which brought out In Our Time in 1925. That summer Loeb spent a week on the Spanish coast with Lady Duff Twysden, then joined her, Hemingway, Hadley Richardson, Pat Guthrie, and Donald Ogden Stewart at the fiesta in Pamplona. The week went badly. Hemingway challenged him to a fight over Duff Twysden; the two exchanged apologetic notes the next day, and within a year Loeb was in print as Robert Cohn — the crowd's punching bag, and the character the novel treats worst.
His own novels, Doodab (1925) and The Professors Like Vodka (1927), were reviewed and forgotten. He worked for the National Recovery Administration in the 1930s and wrote on economics, but the novel followed him. In 1959 he published The Way It Was, a memoir that goes through the Pamplona summer point by point and remains the fullest reply any Hemingway model ever put on the record. He outlived nearly everyone in the book, dying of a heart attack in Marrakesh in 1974 at eighty-two.
Life events
Born in New York City to a banking father and a Guggenheim mother.
Graduates from Princeton.
Founds the magazine Broom, publishing Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and Man Ray over the next few years, largely at his own expense.
Recommends Hemingway to Boni & Liveright, which publishes In Our Time. In July he goes to Pamplona, where Hemingway challenges him to a fight over Duff Twysden. His novel Doodab appears the same year.
The Sun Also Rises is published, with Loeb recognisable as Robert Cohn. He recognised himself at once.
Publishes his second novel, The Professors Like Vodka.
Publishes The Way It Was, his memoir of the Paris years and of the fiesta, answering the portrait after thirty-three years.
Dies of a heart attack at Marrakesh on 20 January, aged eighty-two.
Featured in these books
People they knew
Ernest Hemingway
- Author
- Journalist
Met
Loeb recommended Hemingway's early work to Boni & Liveright, which published In Our Time in 1925. Weeks later the two quarrelled over Duff Twysden at Pamplona, and Hemingway put him in the novel as Robert Cohn.
Questions about Harold Loeb
Who was Harold Loeb?
An American writer and editor, born in New York in 1891, who founded the modernist magazine Broom and wrote two novels. He is best known as the model for Robert Cohn in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
Is Robert Cohn based on Harold Loeb?
Yes, and closely enough that Loeb recognised himself immediately. Hemingway drew Cohn from Loeb after the July 1925 Pamplona trip: the Princeton boxing, the wealthy New York family, the little magazine, the published novel, and the week with Lady Duff Twysden on the coast all come from Loeb's life.
Did Harold Loeb and Hemingway fight at Pamplona?
Hemingway challenged him to a fight over Duff Twysden during the 1925 fiesta, but the two exchanged apologetic notes the next day rather than trading punches. In the novel, the quarrel becomes the beating Cohn gives Pedro Romero.
Did Harold Loeb ever respond to The Sun Also Rises?
He did, at length. His 1959 memoir The Way It Was retells the Paris years and the Pamplona summer in his own version, and it is the fullest published answer any real person behind a Hemingway character ever gave.
What happened to Harold Loeb after the 1920s?
He left literature for public work and economics, serving with the National Recovery Administration during the New Deal and writing on production and scarcity. He kept returning to the Paris years in print, and died in Marrakesh in 1974, aged eighty-two, having outlived nearly everyone in the novel.
What was Broom magazine?
An international magazine of the arts that Loeb founded in 1921 and largely financed, printed in Rome and later Berlin. It ran work by Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and Man Ray before folding in 1924.
Sourced claims
Met
Ernest Hemingway
Loeb recommended Hemingway's early work to Boni & Liveright, which published In Our Time in 1925. Weeks later the two quarrelled over Duff Twysden at Pamplona, and Hemingway put him in the novel as Robert Cohn.
Depicted in
The Sun Also Rises
Robert Cohn is drawn from him — the Princeton boxing, the wealthy New York family, the little magazine, and the week with Duff Twysden on the coast. Loeb recognised himself at once and answered the portrait in his 1959 memoir.