News
Hemingway Letters Project Archives the Past, Makes Modern Connections
Although celebrated American novelist Ernest Hemingway died decades ago, Penn State students and faculty members in the Hemingway Letters Project continue uncovering new information about the writer’s life through an analysis of over 6,000 of his letters.
The project provides Penn State students with archival experiences as they help produce each new volume of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway. Moreover, working on the project allows students to better understand history through the lens of historical correspondences and manuscripts.
Sandra Spanier, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Women’s Studies and General Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, said this work began over a decade ago when Hemingway’s son, Patrick, “wanted his father to have the full literary treatment [with] his complete letter collection published.”
At the beginning of the initiative, the team thought they would publish a dozen volumes; however, Spanier said the number of expected editions expanded as more letters and other materials were located and analyzed. Most recently, they submitted the manuscript for volume six to Cambridge University Press, featuring Hemingway’s letters from June 1934 through June 1936.
“There’s a big educational component to it because over the course of the project, we’ve had more than 60 undergraduate interns and close to 40 grad students,” Spanier said. “This is not a hypothetical research situation. There are real readers here. There are real deadlines. There are people who are going to let you know if you made a mistake.”
“A big part of what we do is get the context of the letters, so we’re not simply publishing transcriptions,” Spanier explained. “We’re annotating them. We’re writing introductions. We’re giving timelines for every volume regarding who the recipients are. Every volume is a slice of Hemingway’s life at a particular period.”
Dr. Verna Kale, Associate Research Professor of English and Hemingway Letters Project Associate Editor, said she’s worked on the project in “two capacities,” initially getting involved with the project as a graduate student in 2004 and later returning in an editorial position.
Beyond Hemingway’s literary accomplishments, which include winning both the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize, Kale said she finds his “cultural impact” to be especially interesting.
Since Hemingway lived through historical moments like the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War, Kale explained that readers “really aren’t getting just the letters of one person, but they’re getting this eyewitness account of some of the most important aspects of early 20th century life.”
Kale said she doesn’t get bored “focusing on one person all day every day” because she views Hemingway as a “window into all these other interesting things: art, music, history, pop culture, issues about race and class and sexuality.”
Kale discussed Penn State’s “long history of involvement in Hemingway studies” and described the “two major Hemingway collections” contained within Penn State’s library systems: the Ernest Hemingway Letters to his Family and the Toby and Betty Bruce Collection of Ernest Hemingway. Some of Hemingway’s possessions within the library are not letters but physical objects—such as a World War I uniform—which provide unique insights into Hemingway’s life.
“You can’t publish a uniform,” Kale continued, “but you can look at it and know part of that larger story” about Hemingway and the experiences that inspired his work.
Kale emphasized that the Hemingway Letters Project is not only “a project that produces a product”—the volumes of letters—but also aids students in their learning experience.
Melissa Zavala, an undergraduate intern with the project, completes tasks like scanning and accessioning new documents and maintaining the electronic archive of letters. Zavala enjoys working with the Hemingway Letters Project because it allows people to “interact with history,” “reflect on the past,” and compare history to modern-day events.
“It’s important to see Ernest Hemingway as more than just the author of all of these great stories and the creator of [various] literary techniques that we use nowadays,” Zavala said. “He was also a person, and it’s important to humanize the people behind the works that they produce. In a way, it helps us to understand where Hemingway was coming from [and] see beyond that screen of fame and glory into the person that he was.”
Morgan Hamill, a former Hemingway graduate research assistant, applied for the position because she’s always been interested in archival research and desired to learn more about the process.
“Hemingway is big in the popular imagination,” Hamill said. “The importance of the project is simply getting people access to the things that he was thinking, as he wrote and lived his life.”
Hamill said archival work “takes a lot of patience as [they] try to discover information from history and trawl the internet looking for particulars.” Once the information is located, Hamill said they often feel “super satisfied because it’s like solving a little puzzle.” Hamill said she enjoys the “discovery components” of the project—being able to find someone that Hemingway referenced in his letters after a “grueling search” and knowing exactly what they were doing on a random date in history.
Hamill explained many of the annotations that she’s researched involve “guns, historical people, places and events” that occurred during Hemingway’s life. “It was less about researching him and more about researching the context that he lived in,” Hamill continued.
Graduate Research Assistant Yafang Luo said archival work involves “meticulous excavation of details” that emphasize the “importance of historical contextualization of literary works.” Although people typically “read literature for pleasure,” Luo said archival work helps “shed light” on the connections that exist between writings and grander social values.
In the digital age, when “information’s at people’s fingertips,” graduate research assistant Chelsea Parker remarked, the Hemingway Letters Project provides “a richer picture” about Hemingway’s life. When unable to find necessary information for annotations, Parker said she may feel like “banging her head against the wall,” but she always continues deep diving and piecing together information to uncover the truth about a historical event.
Daniela Farkas, a graduate research assistant for the Hemingway Letters Project, said the project’s given her a “surprising appreciation for research” and the “significance of verifying data being used in research-based projects,” even if it’s presented in an “authoritative source.”
Farkas described the process of working in the archives as “ongoing” and “never actually complete” because new materials are consistently found and analyzed.
The interns and research assistants, including Farkas, acknowledged that working with Hemingway’s letters allowed them to “look at an entire period of time” through the lens of his life, relationships and experiences. The Hemingway Letters Project also helps everyday people develop a more rounded historical understanding of Hemingway, whose work has been heavily read in high school English classes and still engenders public discussion.
For many students, participating in archival work like the Hemingway Letters Project helps them understand how seemingly mundane historical documents shape American literary studies and people’s attachments to famous literary voices.
Although celebrated American novelist Ernest Hemingway died decades ago, Penn State students and faculty members in the Hemingway Letters Project continue uncovering new information about the writer’s life through an analysis of over 6,000 of his letters.
The project provides Penn State students with archival experiences as they help produce each new volume of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway. Moreover, working on the project allows students to better understand history through the lens of historical correspondences and manuscripts.
Sandra Spanier, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Women’s Studies and General Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, said this work began over a decade ago when Hemingway’s son, Patrick, “wanted his father to have the full literary treatment [with] his complete letter collection published.”
At the beginning of the initiative, the team thought they would publish a dozen volumes; however, Spanier said the number of expected editions expanded as more letters and other materials were located and analyzed. Most recently, they submitted the manuscript for volume six to Cambridge University Press, featuring Hemingway’s letters from June 1934 through June 1936.
“There’s a big educational component to it because over the course of the project, we’ve had more than 60 undergraduate interns and close to 40 grad students,” Spanier said. “This is not a hypothetical research situation. There are real readers here. There are real deadlines. There are people who are going to let you know if you made a mistake.”
“A big part of what we do is get the context of the letters, so we’re not simply publishing transcriptions,” Spanier explained. “We’re annotating them. We’re writing introductions. We’re giving timelines for every volume regarding who the recipients are. Every volume is a slice of Hemingway’s life at a particular period.”
Dr. Verna Kale, Associate Research Professor of English and Hemingway Letters Project Associate Editor, said she’s worked on the project in “two capacities,” initially getting involved with the project as a graduate student in 2004 and later returning in an editorial position.
Beyond Hemingway’s literary accomplishments, which include winning both the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize, Kale said she finds his “cultural impact” to be especially interesting.
Since Hemingway lived through historical moments like the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War, Kale explained that readers “really aren’t getting just the letters of one person, but they’re getting this eyewitness account of some of the most important aspects of early 20th century life.”
Kale said she doesn’t get bored “focusing on one person all day every day” because she views Hemingway as a “window into all these other interesting things: art, music, history, pop culture, issues about race and class and sexuality.”
Kale discussed Penn State’s “long history of involvement in Hemingway studies” and described the “two major Hemingway collections” contained within Penn State’s library systems: the Ernest Hemingway Letters to his Family and the Toby and Betty Bruce Collection of Ernest Hemingway. Some of Hemingway’s possessions within the library are not letters but physical objects—such as a World War I uniform—which provide unique insights into Hemingway’s life.
“You can’t publish a uniform,” Kale continued, “but you can look at it and know part of that larger story” about Hemingway and the experiences that inspired his work.
Kale emphasized that the Hemingway Letters Project is not only “a project that produces a product”—the volumes of letters—but also aids students in their learning experience.
Melissa Zavala, an undergraduate intern with the project, completes tasks like scanning and accessioning new documents and maintaining the electronic archive of letters. Zavala enjoys working with the Hemingway Letters Project because it allows people to “interact with history,” “reflect on the past,” and compare history to modern-day events.
“It’s important to see Ernest Hemingway as more than just the author of all of these great stories and the creator of [various] literary techniques that we use nowadays,” Zavala said. “He was also a person, and it’s important to humanize the people behind the works that they produce. In a way, it helps us to understand where Hemingway was coming from [and] see beyond that screen of fame and glory into the person that he was.”
Morgan Hamill, a former Hemingway graduate research assistant, applied for the position because she’s always been interested in archival research and desired to learn more about the process.
“Hemingway is big in the popular imagination,” Hamill said. “The importance of the project is simply getting people access to the things that he was thinking, as he wrote and lived his life.”
Hamill said archival work “takes a lot of patience as [they] try to discover information from history and trawl the internet looking for particulars.” Once the information is located, Hamill said they often feel “super satisfied because it’s like solving a little puzzle.” Hamill said she enjoys the “discovery components” of the project—being able to find someone that Hemingway referenced in his letters after a “grueling search” and knowing exactly what they were doing on a random date in history.
Hamill explained many of the annotations that she’s researched involve “guns, historical people, places and events” that occurred during Hemingway’s life. “It was less about researching him and more about researching the context that he lived in,” Hamill continued.
Graduate Research Assistant Yafang Luo said archival work involves “meticulous excavation of details” that emphasize the “importance of historical contextualization of literary works.” Although people typically “read literature for pleasure,” Luo said archival work helps “shed light” on the connections that exist between writings and grander social values.
In the digital age, when “information’s at people’s fingertips,” graduate research assistant Chelsea Parker remarked, the Hemingway Letters Project provides “a richer picture” about Hemingway’s life. When unable to find necessary information for annotations, Parker said she may feel like “banging her head against the wall,” but she always continues deep diving and piecing together information to uncover the truth about a historical event.
Daniela Farkas, a graduate research assistant for the Hemingway Letters Project, said the project’s given her a “surprising appreciation for research” and the “significance of verifying data being used in research-based projects,” even if it’s presented in an “authoritative source.”
Farkas described the process of working in the archives as “ongoing” and “never actually complete” because new materials are consistently found and analyzed.
The interns and research assistants, including Farkas, acknowledged that working with Hemingway’s letters allowed them to “look at an entire period of time” through the lens of his life, relationships and experiences. The Hemingway Letters Project also helps everyday people develop a more rounded historical understanding of Hemingway, whose work has been heavily read in high school English classes and still engenders public discussion.
For many students, participating in archival work like the Hemingway Letters Project helps them understand how seemingly mundane historical documents shape American literary studies and people’s attachments to famous literary voices.