New Hemingway Movie Gets Released

Ernest Hemingway’s 1950 book, Across the River and into the Trees, is now a movie directed by Paula Ortiz and starring actor Liev Schreiber. Mr. Schreiber plays Colonel Richard Cantwell in the movie. The movie also stars, Matilda De Angelis, Danny Huston, Josh Hutcherson, and Laura Morante. The official release date of the movie was at the end of March 2022.

Across the River and into the Trees was not well received initially as a book back in 1950 but still ended up on the New York Times best seller list for seven weeks. That was actually the best showing for any of Hemingway’s major works. A must watch!

What is the Value of a Full Set of Ernest Hemingway First Editions?

There are many rare book collectors, internationally and around the U.S., who search for Ernest Hemingway novels. I know, personally, I’m a few books away from having a copy of each of the Nobel prize wining authors novels. Some are first editions but many are not first editions, first printings of his work. Or better yet, a signed copy with all of the above. What do you think the price tag of a full set of all his important works would run? I have seen one signed copy of a first edition, first printing, of his early work priced at $225,000.

Recently, while on Abe’s Books, I spotted just that, a full set of all Hemingway’s first editions – two of which were signed by the author. The price tag was $35,000. Happy Hunting!

Recently Finished Lesley Blume’s “Everybody Behaves Badly”

I really enjoyed Leslie M. M. Blume’s national best-selling, Everybody Behaves Badly (Mariner Books, 2017). If you’re like me and The Sun Also Rises (SAR) is a personal favorite, then this is a must read book. Ms. Blume does a deep dive into the research behind Hemingways visits to Paris and Spain in the 1920’s. She explores Hemingway’s relationship first wife Hadley Richardson and their eclectic group of traveling characters. The book offers great insight on how Hemingway developed his character for SAR based his real life friends who were actually with the Hemingway’s taking it all in. Only the names were changed to protect the innocent:>0

Ernest Hemingway started writing his thoughts down immediately upon returning from his Pamplona trip. The book started off as Fiesta before eventually becoming The Sun Also Rises, published a year after their trip in 1926.

Wonderful Article on Hemingway’s Finca Vigia

I recently came across this article published, back in February 2020, in the Magazine Antiques by Michael Connors. The article had a beautiful spread of Hemingway and Gellhorn’s home in Cuba, The Finca Vigia. It’s worth reading just to see the eleven photos that Connor’s added as part of the story. Enjoy!

Image Credit: The Magazine Antiques. Picture: Havana, Cuba. The master bedroom at Ernest Hemingway’s home at Finca La Vigia.

Ernest Hemingway Curation Now Available on Instagram

Instagram is viewed by millions of users on a daily basis involving many different categories and genres of topics. There are to date a few great Instagram accounts that cover different aspects related to the life of Ernest Hemingway.

The newly created Hemingway Curation is now one more site added to that list that’s part of the growing world of Instagram. Instagram, owned by Facebook, has been able to maintain a pretty consistent user base over the past year. “In 2019, the percentage of US adults who used Instagram rose from 35% to 37% and the active reported users have held steady around 1 billion people.”

The idea behind Hemingway Curation was a seamless way that could help me keep track and document my Hemingway content. Coming in the form of books, (especially first editions), literary magazines, research papers and more. Basically, a personal online curation of the great American author Ernest Hemingway. Posts are added on a daily basis documenting mainly the books that I have on Hemingway. There are also Instagram stories that include pictures of and quotes from Hemingway himself. Hope you enjoy it.

Please follow Hemingway Curation on Instagram @hemingwaycuration. Thank you and be well.

Ernest Hemingway’s Personal Library

Ernest Hemingway is considered one  of greatest writers of our generation. He was also an avid reader and book collector over the course his lifetime. His private library contained approximately 9000 volumes. The majority of his books are stored at the Finca Vigia in Cuba and at his former property in Key West, Florida, where he lived from 1931 to 1939. He lived the longest period of his life though in Cuba, on and off for 30-years.

”I think I’ve read all the biographies of Hemingway and I’ve never had a a complete sense of him until I smelled this house and saw some of these things,” Mr. Berg said. ”This is what has been missing on Hemingway, this is the stuff that makes him come alive.”  A. Scott Berg, Biographer

Today, a great deal of his digitized collection can be found in Boston at the JFK Library. If you’re interested in what the author read, there is a great collection put together by Michael Reynolds of the books Hemingway owned between 1910-1940. Reynolds of course wrote one of the best 5-volume biographies on Ernest Hemingway to date.

Hemingways private library has always intrigued me for various reasons. I started looking into it again after reading a great 2017 article that I just came across by Emily Temple on the Literary Hub website. Her article talks about private collections of ten famous individuals. I knew Hemingway would make the list but was actually surprised by some others who had massive collections. This included people like Karl Lagerfeld and George Lucas who had private libraries that contained 300,000 and 27,000 volumes respectively.

There are many other private collections that have outdone the rare, Hemingway collection. like historian & bibliomaniac Andrew Dickson White. He spent his life traveling around the world and amassed a huge book collection of more than 34,000 volumes. His unique collection was later donated to help start the Cornell University library in Ithaca, NY.

Additional Reading

Saving Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban Legacy: Preserving Finca Vigía

Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying

10 Famous Book Hoarders, by Emily Temple

New Ernest Hemingway Center in Havana, Cuba Is Dedicated to Preserving the Author’s Work, by Emily Petsko

Favorite Book List by NYPL Includes Hemingway

A favorites book list was put together by the staff and patrons of the New York Public Library as part of their 125 year celebration of the opening of the library. We all love to peruse these types of best or favorite book lists when they make print and this list – found here – must be included as a favorite.

The list includes some outstanding authors, both new and old, as well as many outstanding books. Making the list was Ernest Hemingways, The Sun Also Rises.

Hemingway Listed Twice in Connolly’s “100 Key Books”

I have been trying to get my hands on a copy of Cyril Connolly’s book, 100 Key Books (1965/1986), for quite some time now. That time has now arrived.

For all the bibliophiles out there, it’s a great list to both read and collect (especially first editions). The list that Connolly put together includes some of the best literary works from authors like Henry James, E.M.Forster, T.E. Eliot, D.H Lawrence and of course, Ernest Hemingway. The books that made the top 100 were published between 1880 and 1950. Hemingway’s works included In Our Time (1924) and The Sun Also Rises (1926), listed in part II: The Twenties section. Hemingway would most likely had a third book, Old Man and the Sea (published September 1, 1952) if Connolly had decided to go beyond the year 1950.

Hemingway’s Short Story from 1956 is Published for First Time

Ernest Hemingway had a handful of short stories that were never published during his lifetime. He told his publisher Scribner to publish these five short stories after his death. One of those long-lost stories, “A Room on the Garden Side,” is now being published 62 years later. Hemingway was quoted as saying “they are probably very dull stories but some are very funny I think. Anyway you can always publish them after I’m dead.”

Image Credit: Copyblogger

The short story deals with war and male camaraderie during war time. The story begins inside the Hotel Ritz in Paris, one of Hemingway’s favorite cities. Some of his best work like For Whom the Bell Tolls was also written during wart time and I’m sure this short story will not disappoint the many Hemingway fans.

New Books on Hemingway Hitting the Bookshelves

There is an abundance of new work out on Author Ernest Hemingway including, Ernest Hemingway: A Biography, from Mary Dearborn who I believe is the first women to write a biography on Hemingway. Enjoy!

Ernest Hemingway: A Biography

by Mary V. Dearborn

Knopf, 738 pp., $35.00

Ernest Hemingway: A New Life

by James M. Hutchisson

Pennsylvania State University Press, 292 pp., $37.95

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Adventures, 1935–1961

by Nicholas Reynolds

William Morrow, 357 pp., $27.99

The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Hemingway Library Edition

edited and with an introduction by Seán Hemingway, and a foreword by Patrick Hemingway

Scribner, 576 pp., $32.00 (to be published in July)

Visiting Hemingway at NYC Morgan Library

During a recent visit to New York, I had an opportunity to see the, first of its kind, Ernest Hemingway Exhibition at the Morgan Library on Madison Ave. in Manhattan. The exhibit is titled, Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars, and it looked at his life and work focusing primarily on the time period from 1919 through the late 1940’s.

The exhibit, curated by Declan Kiely in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, is broken into six sections. I was in a group of about 50 people who were taken through and shown each section by a lovely women who was excellent and in my opinion was well-read in regard to Hemingway. The first ever museum exhibit featured a collection of 100+ artifacts, including his passport, an original Hemingway portrait, photos, dog tags, and handwritten correspondence between Hemingway and his parents, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker.

The six sections of the exhibit included: The “Prophet”(covered his early years through high school), World War I, Paris, Key West and Havana, World War II, and finally, An Old Hunter Talking to Gods.

During my three hour visit I picked up a copy of A.E. Hotchner’s new book, Hemingway in Love: His Own Story (St. Martin’s, 2015) at the Morgan Library bookstore, as well as a photo of E.H. There was also a copy of Hemingway’s Camping Out which I had not previously seen but fortunate for me a good friend made it a Christmas gift for me.

I would highly recommend a visit to experience Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars – on display at the Morgan through Jan. 31, 2016.

Complete Online Version of Hemingway’s in our time

Here is a complete version of Ernest Hemingway’s 1924 novel, in our time, which is his collection of short stories about the years before, during, and after World War I. There are fifteen short stories, or chapters, in Hemingway’s work and each one begins with a short vignette.

Hemingway Quote Found in Boston’s North End

You just never know when you will come across something involving the wide scope of Ernest Hemingway. It may be finding a copy of one of Papa’s classic novels in an old bookstore (which has happened to a few of us!). But how many of you have come across a Hemingway quote in a bathroom of all places in Boston? Well if you eat at Neptune Oyster in Boston’s North End (the food was great) you will see the following quote:

Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa Gets a New Skin

Credit: http://simonandshuster.com

Ernest Hemingway’s 1935 classic Green Hills of Africa has been updated as part of The Hemingway Literary Edition. This was Hemingway’s second venture into the world of nonfiction, following Death in the Afternoon (1932).

Both Patrick and Sean Hemingway have added new sections: the foreword and the new introduction. The four new sections at the end of the book include:

1. Appendix 1: Pauline Pfieffer Hemingway’s Journal (1933-1934).
2. Appendix 11: Introductory Letter from Hemingway and Safari Notes
3. Appendix 111: The Tanganyika Letters
4. Appendix 1v: Early Drafts and Deleted Passages from GHA

The section from Pauline Pfieffer, Hemingway’s second wife, offers an interesting perspective. She studied writing at the University of Missouri and received her undergraduate degree in journalism, she wrote for Vogue magazine in Paris and Vanity Fair and she definitely offers a “fresh perspective.”

His book is the result of a month long African safari in December 1933 with his wife Pauline.

Additional Reading

Books of the Time, NY Times, October, 1935

Green Hills of Africa – Writer on Writer Blog

Hemingway’s Paris by Robert Wheeler

Credit: Amazon.com

I received a copy of a great book today titled Hemingway’s Paris: A Writer’s City in Words and Images by Robert Wheeler (Yucca Publishing, 180 pages, 2015). The author, Robert Wheeler is a photojournalist and professor at Southern New Hampshire University, where he teaches courses in writing and on Hemingway. Professor Wheeler was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award for 2006.

As you read through this wonderfully written and designed book, you feel like you’re back in the 1920’s walking along the Quai St. Michel in Paris with Hemingway by your side.

The book contains five sections that contain more than 80 beautiful, black and white, photos of Paris as seen through the eyes of Wheeler’s Ernest Hemingway.

If you’re interested in Hemingway or Paris, this book is a must read.

Suggested Reading

Ernest Hemingway and the Highs and Lows of Paris by Sam Jordison (The Guardian, 2012)

Two Classic Book Stores with Many Hemingway Titles

Credit: http://bookbarnniantic.com/

This past summer I came across a fantastic old book store in Niantic, CT, called the Book Barn. There were multiple locations in this small, sea-side village which was fortunate for me.  Niantic is a small village, with a population of barely 3,000 in the town of East Lyme, CT.  One of the locations had books literally housed everywhere on every inch of the property (see photo).  The first question I typically ask is when walking into any bookstore is, “Do you have anything regarding Hemingway?” I ended up getting a mint copy of Hemingway in Spain (Double Day & Co., 1974) by Jose Luis Catillo-Puche, a copy of Peter Griffin’s Along With Youth: Hemingway the Early Years (Oxford University Press, 1985).  This book also has a 1988 inscription from Peter Griffin himself to a student by the name of “Joan.”  I also picked up a hard copy of A.E. Hotchner’s Papa Hemingway (Random House, 1966).  I had only read the paperback version of his book and this was in excellent condition.  I always liked Hemingway’s quote that is before the foreword of the book and reads:

“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring.  They are very simplest things, and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.”  Ernest Hemingway

 

The second book store was called Books on the Square located on 471 Angell Street in good ole’ Providence, R.I. This book has a great location and included a great collection of books with a few Hemingway titles as well. I ended up getting an updated copy of The Sun Also Rises (Scribner, 2014). This was The Hemingway Library Edition. If you’re in the area check out these two classic book stores.

Additional Reading

Edition Has Alternate Opening of ‘Sun Also Rises’ by Patricia Cohen (New York Times, July 2014).

To Use And Use Not by Julie Bosman (New York Times, 2012).