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Hemingway Letters Project moves closer to publication

University Park, Pa. -- The Hemingway Letters Project, headed by Penn State English Professor Sandra Spanier, is inching closer to its 2009 publication date as an international team of scholars combs through the vast correspondence the American author wrote during his lifetime. About 90 percent of his letters are as yet unpublished, and new letters continue to be discovered.

In an interview this month with W Radio based in Colombia, South America, Spanier revealed that the project -- expected to stretch over the next 15 years -- provides a deeper understanding of Ernest Hemingway's complicated nature as well as his unguarded commentary on prominent people and events of the 20th century. The interview, which is translated into English, can be found at http://www.wradio.com.co/entrevistasa.asp online.

"Hemingway wrote on everything," Spanier said. "He wrote in the margins of his books and even on the walls of his house in Cuba." His writings parallel events in his life and are not only adding immensely to the study of American literature, but also are aiding restoration efforts at his home Finca Vigia in Cuba, where he lived from 1939 to 1960.

"During restoration work more notations were discovered on his bathroom walls under layers of paint," Spanier said, "The letters have turned out to be helpful to architects, engineers and conservation specialists doing the restoration work because we have been able to document from Hemingway's writings when he painted a particular room or when he put on a new roof."

Spanier is general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, an ambitious endeavor to catalog, document and publish the complete letters of Ernest Hemingway. It is authorized by the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and the Hemingway estate, which hold the copyrights to the letters, and is based at Penn State. Spanier was among the first North Americans granted permission to see the manuscript collection at Finca Vigia. Those papers now are being restored and scanned, with copies to be deposited in the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, according to a historic 2002 cooperative agreement between Cuban and U.S. cultural organizations.

Spanier's radio interview discusses the progress made so far on the Letters Project and the expected time frame for publication of some of the letters. The project so far has unearthed more than 6,000 letters and is expected to result in a 12-volume edition to be published by Cambridge University Press. The letters will be organized in chronological order, with extensive annotations, and volumes will include illustrations and maps. The first volume is projected to be in print by early 2009 and will contain nearly 500 letters Hemingway wrote through 1925. Each volume is expected to include roughly 500 to 700 letters.

"Hemingway was extremely interested in politics--  he was a newspaper reporter and a keen observer of life around him," Spanier said. "Each correspondence has a different tone and we have so many stories that are linked together by his letters.

"I think people will be surprised at what a thoughtful and sensitive person he was, given his public image."

Spanier said Hemingway may have cultivated the image of a "macho hunter, fighter and sportsman," but through his letters it is clear that he was "a complex human being with many different faces and facets." He also was extremely well-read.

The Hemingway Letters Project is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and was designated a "We, the People" project, a special recognition for model projects that advance the study, teaching and understanding of American history and culture.

Last Updated December 7, 2010

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