Call Number:

C0365

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 36 boxes
• 16.4 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Carlos Baker Collection of Ernest Hemingway, Box #, Folder #, Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1800s-1987 (inclusive) and 1918-1967 (bulk)

Creator:

Baker, Carlos, 1909-1987

Abstract:

Consists primarily of Carlos Baker's working papers and biographical files used in preparation of his biography Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (1969). This was the fourth book on Hemingway written or edited by Baker (1909-1987), a Princeton professor and author. Also present are manuscripts for a novel and book of poetry by Baker, unrelated to his work on Hemingway.

Carlos Baker (1909-1987), educator, editor, poet, and author, was born in Maine, but resided in Princeton, New Jersey, since 1937. He did his undergraduate work at Dartmouth University, earned a masters at Harvard, and received his doctorate from Princeton University in 1940. Baker remained at Princeton as a professor of English, 1938-1953, and then as Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature from 1953 to his retirement in 1977.

Baker's books include the first full-length critical interpretation of Ernest Hemingway's works, Hemingway: the Writer as Artist (1952), and the authorized biography, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (1969), which was acclaimed for its thoroughness and non-judgmental presentation of the facts of Hemingway's life and exploits. Carlos Baker also published short stories, poetry, literary criticism, novels, and essays, such as Shelley's Major Poetry: the Fabric of Vision (1948), The Land of Rumbelow (1963), and The Talisman and Other Stories (1976).

1899 Born July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, IL 1917-1918 Cub reporter, Kansas City Star, Kansas City, MO 1918-1919 Ambulance driver for Red Cross Ambulance Corps in Italy 1920-1921 Writer, Cooperative Commonwealth, Chicago, IL 1920 Covered Greco-Turkish War for the Toronto Star 1921 Married Hadley Richardson, September 3 (divorced March 10, 1927) 1921-1924 European correspondent, Toronto Star 1923 Son John ("Bumby", "Jack") born, October 10 1923 Published Three Stories & Ten Poems (Paris) 1924 Published in our time (Paris) 1926 Published The Sun Also Rises 1927 Published Men Without Women (stories) 1927 Married Pauline Pfeiffer (a writer), May 10 (divorced November 4, 1940) 1928 Son Patrick ("Mouse") born, June 28 1929 Published A Farewell to Arms 1931 Son Gregory ("Gigi") born, November 12 1933 Published Winner Take Nothing (stories) 1937-1938 Covered Spanish Civil War for North American Newspaper Alliance 1940 Published For Whom the Bell Tolls 1940 Married Martha Gellhorn (a writer), November 21 (divorced December 21, 1945) 1941 War correspondent in China 1944-1945 War correspondent in Europe 1946 Married Mary Welsh (a writer), March 14 1952 Published The Old Man and the Sea 1953 Awarded Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea 1954 Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature 1961 Committed suicide, July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, ID 1970 Islands in the Stream published posthumously

The collection consists of the working papers and biographical files about Ernest Hemingway compiled by Baker, Princeton English professor, in preparation of his biography Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (1969). The working papers contain Xeroxes and typed copies of correspondence between Hemingway and friends, publishers, and family, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, C. T. Lanham, Maxwell Perkins, and Mary, Patrick, and Hadley Hemingway. There are drafts, a final typed version, and proofs for the biography, as well as a mock-up copy of the book. In addition, there are transcripts of articles written by Hemingway for the Toronto Star and Esquire, periodical articles by and about him, letters to Baker about Hemingway, copies of reviewers' comments, magazine interviews, material relating to Hemingway's winning of the Nobel Prize in literature (1954) and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (1953), a Xerox copy of the original manuscript of Hemingway's Islands in the Stream (1970), and a scrapbook.

The biographical files begin in the 1800s with material on the Hemingway family genealogy and span Hemingway's entire life, from his birth in 1899 to his suicide in 1961. The files include letters to Baker, copies of anecdotes, correspondence between other people about Hemingway, eyewitness accounts of Hemingway in World War II, excerpts from Mary Hemingway's diaries while in Africa, documents, memorabilia, such as Hemingway's 1917 yearbook from Oak Park High School (Illinois), and printed matter.

The collection also contains two of Baker's works unrelated to the Hemingway material: a typed manuscript with the author's corrections of a novel, The Land of Rumblelow (1963), and a typed manuscript with editor's notations of a book of poems, A Year and a Day: Poems (1963), as well as a small file of correspondence of Baker relating to his participation on the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury in 1975. In addition, there is a phonograph record (in Russian) with a typed transcript in English of Radio Liberation programs about Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago, and the award of the Nobel Prize to him in 1958.

The organization of the Hemingway material in the collection reflects the order in which Baker kept and, presumably, used it.