The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum yesterday announced that they have fifteen letters written by Ernest Hemingway to his friend Gianfranco Ivancich that are now available for scholars.
The earliest of the letters was written in 1953 and the last one was written in 1960. They were written from various parts of the world including Cuba, Kilimanjaro, and Paris.
Twelve of the letters have never been published before so there is a great deal of excitement about them. Right now, the letters are only available to scholars.
The JFK Library is known for its huge Ernest Hemingway collection and boasts that it has over 90 % of the existing Hemingway manuscript materials. The fifteen latest letters join five others at the JFK Library that Hemingway wrote to Ivancich and 23 that Ivancich wrote to Hemingway.
These letters are a perfect example of a collection that could be digitized, stored, and made available to everyone at a National Digital Public Library. The letters are currently not available to the public in digital format and it’s unclear if the JFK Library plans to make them available in digital format sometime in the future.
It’s pretty cool that so much of Ernest Hemingway’ life and work are being preserved at a library. It’d be even cooler if it was digitized and made available to everyone with internet access.