World libraries: Scrapbooks Chronicling Ernest Hemingway’s Childhood Made Available for First Time by JFK Library

On the 114th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s birth, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum announced that five scrapbooks documenting the childhood of the Nobel Prize-winning author have been made available to the public for the first time in their entirety as digital images. Created and annotated by Hemingway’s mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, the scrapbooks chronicle the first eighteen years of her son’s life and include many never-before-seen photographs, letters, drawings, homework assignments and other keepsakes from his childhood.

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. Due to the fragile condition of the scrapbooks, they have remained in the JFK Library’s most secure storage area and are now accessible in digital format on the Library’s website.

Grace Hemingway’s annotations throughout all five books provide context to the family photographs, letters (both to and from young Ernest), school work, and ephemera that she collected and preserved.