With more than 6,000 letters accounted for so far, the project to publish Ernest Hemingway's correspondence may yet reveal the fullest picture of the twentieth-century icon that we've ever had. The second volume includes merely 242 letters, a majority published for the first time. But they span the crucial early Paris years, and readers can watch Hemingway invent the foundation of his legacy in bullrings, bars, and his writing solitude. This is the Hemingway itching to get beyond the limits of journalism and to earn the respect of his literary elders. By the end, Hemingway's first story collection, In Our Time, has been published in the U.S. to admiring reviews. He's polishing his first great novel, The Sun Also Rises, and knocking out his nearly forgotten satire (and takedown of Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein), The Torrents of Spring. Some letters prefigure the cruelties he inflicted in his Paris memoir, A Moveable Feast. It's instructive to witness Hemingway's writing voice change with the moment, and it's cringe-making to watch him sling ethnic and racial slurs, especially to Ezra Pound.--Paul, Steve Copyright 2010 Booklist

This second of 17 projected volumes of Hemingway's correspondence collects 242 letters, telegrams, and postcards in which the globetrotting young author waxes exuberantly on such topics as bullfighting, nostalgia, the grind of writing copy for the Toronto Star, the creative process, the difficulties of making a career as a fiction writer, and the joys of writing fiction ("Have just finished a swell story of 100 pages and feel as though I would like the nurse to lift it up and tell me if it's a boy or a girl"). Many letters are brief and inconsequential, but some of these contain gems-for instance, a 1924 letter to Vanity Fair includes "My Life in the Bull Ring with Donald Ogden Stewart," a previously unpublished jeu d'esprit that the magazine rejected. In August 1925, he writes to Jane Heap that he's completing "a hell of a fine novel. Written very simply and full of things happening and people and places and exciting as hell"-a reference to The Sun Also Rises, published the following year. Hemingway's correspondents include F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Maxwell Perkins, Sherwood Anderson, and John Dos Passos. This expertly edited and annotated volume will be devoured by fans eager to learn how the literary titan came into his own. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

This second installment of Hemingway's collected letters, now projected to run to 17 volumes, contains 242 letters, two-thirds of which are previously unpublished. Correspondents include family, youthful companions, and literary luminaries such as Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Robert McAlmon. The letters document the significant role Hemingway (1889-1961) played in promoting the work of his friends in literary journals such as Transition and This Quarter, as well as his stylistic development leading to the publication of In Our Time (1925) and The Sun Also Rises (1926). Hemingway's letter-writing style is generally playful. Overall, the letters provide a portrait of the author as son, husband, father, and friend-an ordinary American embodying both the values and prejudices of his time. Included are a useful introduction, detailed notes, and a 15-page chronology for the years covered. VERDICT Hemingway did not want his letters published, but this carefully researched scholarly edition does them justice. Carlos Baker's 1981 edition of Hemingway's Selected Letters may suffice for casual readers; however, devotees will find this and future volumes indispensable.--William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.