Must Read Autobiographies - III

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast is a memoir  by American author Ernest Hemingway of his days in Paris in the 1920s when he was a struggling journalist. This was also the period when he was married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson

The memoir was not published during Hemingway's lifetime which ended in 1961. It was published in 1964 by his fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, in 1964. It was subsequently followed by another edition, revised by his grandson, Sean Hemingway, which was published in 2009.

the writing of the memoir has a very interesting background. In 1928, Ernst had stored two of his trunks in the basement of Hotel Ritz in Paris. He had completely forgotten about it. In 1956, when he was having lunch with his biographer in the same hotel, the Chairman of the hotel reminded him about those trunks. At the bottom of the trunks, he found two stacks of notebooks which made him joyous. Those notebooks contained the details of his life, the places he visited, the people he met in the 20s. 

Having recovered his trunks, Hemingway had the notebooks transcribed, and then began working them up into the memoir that would eventually become A Moveable Feast. After Hemingway's death in 1961, his widow Mary Hemingway, in her capacity as his literary executor, made final copy-edits to the manuscript prior to its publication in 1964.

The memoir consists of various personal accounts, observations, and stories by Hemingway. He provides specific addresses of apartments, bars, cafes, and hotels --- many of which can still be found in Paris today. 

Namaste

Prabir