The Early Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Intriguing Glimpse Of Hemingway's Formative Years

Dave Williamson at the Winnipeg Free Press offers a good review of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 1907-1922.

Readers wanting something light should look elsewhere. This is a scholarly volume, with 84 pages of introduction and myriad footnotes that often exceed in length the letters to which they are appended.

What is most fascinating about this book is the evidence of how early in his life Hemingway recognized his ambition to be a novelist. Virtually everything he did after high school in Oak Park (a suburb of Chicago, also the birthplace of Carol Shields) became part of his self-styled apprenticeship. Though his upper-middle-class parents wanted him to go to university, he took a job with the Kansas City Star and was writing news stories at the age of 18.

You can read the rest of the review via the link below:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/intriguing-glimpse-of-hemingways-formative-years-134524253.html