The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podgolomorate Network and LIT Hub Radio.

Hello, anyone who's looked into the life and times of Ernest Hemingway knows that there was not just one Hemingway.

He was a different person in different books and a different person to different people and

maybe a different person even to himself.

Certainly, he was a different person at different times as we all are, I suppose.

We know him well in the 1920s when he was a young man in Paris and Italy in Spain

with novels like a farewell to arms and the sun also rises

tantalizing us with their autobiographical elements and we know him in the Spanish Civil War

and beyond as he returns to form at least according to some novel like for whom the

bell tolls we know him in his lion in winter years when he writes

the old man in the sea and wins the Nobel Prize. But Hemingway did not live a dull life in between those peaks.

Some of the seeming valleys were when he was actually at his most active,

embracing his celebrity, corresponding with friends and lovers and

publishing contexts, writing works that still hold our attention,

his pieces for Esquire, his short stories,

his commentary on current events.

He writes about big-time pastimes like hunting and fishing,

and he lives in a big-time way,

in locations like Key West and Cuba and Bimini.

Who exactly was Hemingway during this time and how do his letters reveal the many facets of his personality?

Ernest Hemingway in his letters from 1934 to 1936

with Sandra Speneer, today on the History of Literature.

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