<P> The novel is regarded as one of Hemingway's best works, along with The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea . </P> <P> Ernest Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in Havana, Cuba; Key West, Florida; and Sun Valley, Idaho in 1939 . In Cuba, he lived in the Hotel Ambos - Mundos where he worked on the manuscript . The novel was finished in July 1940 at the InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel in New York City and published in October . It is based on Hemingway's experiences during the Spanish Civil War and features an American protagonist, named Robert Jordan, who fights with Spanish soldiers for the Republicans . The characters in the novel include those who are purely fictional, those based on real people but fictionalized, and those who were actual figures in the war . Set in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range between Madrid and Segovia, the action takes place during four days and three nights . For Whom the Bell Tolls became a Book of the Month Club choice, sold half a million copies within months, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and became a literary triumph for Hemingway . Published on 21 October 1940, the first edition print run was 75,000 copies priced at $2.75 . </P> <P> The book's title is taken from the metaphysical poet John Donne's series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness (written while Donne was convalescing from a nearly fatal illness) published in 1624 as Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, specifically Meditation XVII . Hemingway quotes part of the meditation (using Donne's original spelling) in the book's epigraph, which in turn refers to the practice of funeral tolling: </P> <Dl> <Dd> No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee . </Dd> </Dl>

Where does the phrase for whom the bell tolls come from