World culture: Unpublished letters written by Ernest Hemingway made available for the first time by JFK Library in Boston

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (Boston, Massachusetts) has announced that fifteen letters written by Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway to his close friend Gianfranco Ivancich have been made available to scholars.

Hemingway met Ivancich and his sister, Adriana, who became the author’s muse, while visiting Venice in 1949. The letters provide a glimpse into Hemingway’s life in Cuba and his travels around the world.

Spanning the years 1953 to 1960, the fifteen pieces of correspondence written by Ernest Hemingway were purchased from Gianfranco Ivancich by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in November 2011. The letters, twelve of which have never before been published, are both handwritten and typed, many with signatures and handwritten notes in the margins. Hemingway wrote to his Venetian friend from Cuba, where he was living during this period, and also while in Ketchum, Idaho; Kilimanjaro; Nairobi; Paris; and Madrid. These new letters complement the 23 letters and cables from Ivancich and five from Hemingway to Ivancich that are already in the Hemingway Collection at the Kennedy Library.

The Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library spans Hemingway’s entire career and represents ninety percent of existing Hemingway manuscript materials, making the Kennedy Library the world’s principal center for research on the life and work of Ernest Hemingway.

“These extraordinary letters offer new insight into Hemingway during the last years of his life,” said Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. “Since many of the letters have never been seen before, they are a treasure trove for new scholarship."

On April 1, 2012, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum will display several of the letters during the annual Hemingway Foundation/PEN New England Awards Ceremony at the Kennedy Library..

The Ernest Hemingway Collection was the generous gift of Mary Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s widow, to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. While Ernest Hemingway and John F. Kennedy never met, President Kennedy admired Hemingway's work. Mary Hemingway saw the Kennedy Library as a fitting place for her husband’s papers due to the role President Kennedy played in helping her collect them after Hemingway’s death. In 1972, Mrs. Hemingway began depositing papers in the Kennedy Library, and in 1980 Patrick Hemingway and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis dedicated the Hemingway Room in the Kennedy Library.