Cuba opens Hemingway archives to scholars

Cuba made the first of thousands of digitised documents, photographs and books that belonged to writer Ernest Hemingway available to scholars after the items languished for decades in the basement of his home outside of Havana.

Most of the papers have never been published and will give new insight into the 21 years Hemingway spent at Finca Vigia in San Francisco de Paula where he wrote some of his greatest works, said Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, director of Museo Ernest Hemingway. Scholars "will be able to study important documents that shed light on the Cuban period of Hemingway, which was very important and not well known by his biographers," she said.

The material includes more than 2,000 documents ranging from manuscripts of some of his works to letters to store receipts, 3,500 photographs and 9,000 books, some 2,000 of which Hemingway was known to have read because he made notes in the margins, she said.

The documents included coded accounts by Hemingway of his exploits searching for German submarines off Cuba's coast during World War II and letters about his love affair with Italian Countess Adriana Ivancich, believed to be the model for the heroine in his 1950 novel Across the River and Into the Trees, Ms Alfonso said.