UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — On Oct. 22, Cambridge University Press will publish Volume 2: 1923-1925 of “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway,” edited by Penn State Professor of English Sandra Spanier, Albert J. DeFazio III and Robert W. Trogdon.
The eagerly awaited next installment, Volume 2 chronicles a seminal period in Hemingway’s life and career: the Paris years.
Including commentary by General Editor Sandra Spanier and her team of editors, the 242 letters in Volume 2 — nearly two-thirds of which are previously unpublished — illuminate Hemingway’s literary apprenticeship in the legendary milieu of expatriate Paris in the 1920s. During this time, Hemingway publishes his first three books, including “In Our Time” (1925), and discovers a lifelong passion for Spain and the bullfight, quickly transforming his experiences into fiction as "The Sun Also Rises" (1926).
As in Volume 1, published to wide acclaim in 2011, these letters record experiences that inspired his art, afford insight into his creative process, and shed light on his tumultuous personal life.
Exclusive features include:
— “My Life in the Bull Ring with Donald Ogden Stewart” — Originally submitted to Vanity Fair, the never-before-published short story was inspired by an incident at the 1924 Fiesta of San Fermín in Pamplona. Although the magazine rejected it, it is a piece of high-spirited comedy significant for showing one of Hemingway’s less familiar faces.
— Hemingway’s relationships with luminaries such as Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Beach, Archibald MacLeish and John Dos Passos.
— His astounding progress writing “The Sun Also Rises, ” drafted by hand in the 10 weeks following the 1925 Fiesta of San Fermín. Published a year later, the novel would propel him to fame and forever define the sensibilities of the so-called “Lost Generation.”
Paula McLain, author of “The Paris Wife,” praises: “Never is Hemingway more fascinating or in flux than in these letters from his Paris years, that dark and dazzling confluence of literary ascendancy and personal maelstrom. Bravo to Sandra Spanier for giving us this dazzling gem of literary scholarship, and the young Hemingway in his own words — unvarnished, wickedly funny, mercilessly human.”