News from The Hemingway Collection

New Guide to the Ernest Hemingway Collection Released

Stacey Chandler and Christina Fitzpatrick
John F. Kennedy Library

Archivists at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library have spent over a year updating the guide to the Ernest Hemingway Personal Papers (http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/EHPP.aspx?f=1), with the goals of improving organization and access for researchers, as well as integrating the now fully-described Other Materials series into the guide. We are excited to share the results of this work, and we compiled a list of the top ten changes in the new guide.

1. 1. All series in the collection are now listed together. Previously, each series was described in a separate webpage, preventing researchers from searching the entire guide at once. The new version allows for a single keyword search of the entire collection, and may highlight relevant materials in unexpected parts of the collection. For example, a search for “Passos” in this guide reveals material related to John Dos Passos across many series, including Manuscripts, Incoming and Outgoing Correspondence, Other Materials, Periodicals, Scrapbooks, and Books.

2. 2. The new formatting of the guide introduces a streamlined view of the collection by listing the folders in each box, but retains detailed document descriptions that can be viewed when a folder description is expanded. Researchers can expand descriptions by clicking on the plus mark (+) next to each folder title. For example, expanding the folder title “345. Cross Country Snow. Manuscript Fragment” opens this detailed description: “Alternative pages 6–8 for typescript/manuscript #344. Pencil draft begins ‘and drank the wine...’ pp. 6–8. 3pp. See also # 696.” To expand all descriptions simultaneously, researchers can scroll to the heading for “Container List,” then click the plus mark (+) next to “Expand / Collapse All.”

3. 3. Box numbers and folder titles are now included in the guide, making it easier for researchers to request boxes and locate documents. This also allows researchers to consistently cite every document’s physical location for the benefit of future scholars.

4. 4. Cataloging descriptions have been reviewed for accuracy and updated as necessary, a process that will be ongoing.

5. 5. We have researched unknown authors’ letters filed at the end of Series 3: Incoming Correspondence. The writers of twenty letters have now been identified for the first time. These individuals include artist Ludwig Bemelmans, childhood friends William A. Cordes and Emily Goetzmann, shipmate Charles S. Evans, and Percy Winner of the New York Post. We also found and cataloged additional letters from Guy Fangel, Archibald Crabbe, and Garfield David Merner.

6. 6. Newspaper clippings and other items that were originally enclosed in letters sent to Hemingway have now been individually cataloged in Incoming Correspondence, making them searchable for the first time. The enclosures are cataloged in the same entry as the letters they accompany, preserving the original context. For example, the item previously described as “TLS Ivy Pratt 11 July 1938, London, 1 p., w/2 pp. enclosure” in Box IC06 is now listed as “TLS Ivy Pratt 11 July 1938, London, 1p., w/contract to publish THAHN in Polish, 2pp.” Similarly, researchers can now expand descriptions that include newspaper clippings to reveal information about the clipping.

7. 7. Series 4: Other Materials is fully processed and described for the first time. Collected by Hemingway and documenting his daily life and interests, the series contains subject files on various topics, such as travel, as well as files of specific types of material, such as receipts. Items of interest include book lists, fishing logs and other notebooks, manuscripts by other writers, legal papers, and writings on the Spanish Civil War, World War I, and World War II. In the course of processing the series, we discovered that some materials were not described in previous inventories or photocopied for research use, leading us to believe that some items have never been seen by researchers. This includes materials such as binders, folders, and envelopes listing word counts and other handwritten Hemingway notes. We encourage researchers to contact the research room before working with this series, so that newly-described items can be photocopied...