Whether you are planning to travel to the Hemingway Society Conference in Bilbao and San Sebastian in July or you just wish you were, here’s a suggested starter reading list of books by and about Hemingway and his connections with Spanish culture. The list of secondary sources focuses on work from the last thirty years and is not intended to be comprehensive; instead, use it as a starting point to find the many worthy books left off this list.
Works by Hemingway
“The Butterfly and the Tank.” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition. Scribner, 1987. Pp. 429-36.
“The Capital of the World.” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition. Scribner, 1987. Pp. 29-38.
The Dangerous Summer. Scribner, 1960.
Death in the Afternoon. Scribner, 1932.
“The Denunciation.” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition. Scribner, 1987. Pp. 420-28.
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War. Scribner, 1969.
For Whom the Bell Tolls. Scribner, 1940.
“Landscape with Figures.” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition. Scribner, 1987. Pp. 590-96.
“Night before Battle.” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition. Scribner, 1987. Pp. 437-59.
“Old Man at the Bridge.” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition. Scribner, 1987.
The Spanish Earth. Written and narrated by Ernest Hemingway. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TgcZUBKlaA
The Sun Also Rises. Scribner, 1926.
“The Undefeated.” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition. Scribner, 1987. Pp. 183-210.
“Under the Ridge.” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition. Scribner, 1987. Pp. 460-69.
Books and Films about Hemingway
Blume, Lesley M.M. Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
Chronicles Hemingway’s trip to Pamplona with Hadley in 1925 and the events that inspired his first novel.
Castro, Tony. Looking for Hemingway: Spain, the Bullfights, and a Final Rite of Passage. Lyons Press, 2016.
Chronicles Hemingway’s 1959 stay at La Consula, the Spanish estate of American expatriates Bill and Anne Davis.
Conrad, Barnaby and Loomis Dean. Hemingway’s Spain. Chronicle Books, 1989.
A coffee table book featuring photographs of Spain and Spanish culture alongside excerpts from Hemingway’s writings.
Eby, Carl P. and Mark Cirino, eds. Hemingway’s Spain: Imagining the Spanish World. Kent State University Press, 2016.
A collection of essays presented at the Hemingway Society Conference in Ronda, Spain, in June 2006, edited by conference program director (and current Hemingway Society president) Carl Eby and One True Podcast host Mark Cirino.
Hemingway and Gellhorn. Directed by Philip Kaufman, performances by Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman, HBO, 2012.
A fictionalized version of Hemingway’s romance with Martha Gellhorn as they both reported on the Spanish Civil War from Madrid.
Josephs, Allen. On Hemingway and Spain: Essays and Reviews, 1979-2013. New Street Communications, 2014.
A collection of more than 30 years’ worth of published scholarship by a professor of Spanish and past president of the Hemingway Society.
Koch, Stephen. The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles. Counterpoint, 2006.
How the murder of a mutual friend alleged to have been a fascist spy destroyed the friendship between Hemingway and John Dos Passos.
Muller, Gilbert H. Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War: The Distant Sound of Battle. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
A reconsideration of Hemingway’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War, marking the eightieth anniversary of the publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Stanton, Edward F. Hemingway in Spain: A Pursuit. University of Washington Press, 1989.
Discusses each of Hemingway’s books with settings in Spain and recounts the author’s own adventures retracing Hemingway’s travels in Spain.
Vaill, Amanda. Hotel Florida: Truth, Love and Death in the Spanish Civil War. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014.
Focuses on three couples and their intertwined destinies during the Spanish Civil War: photographers Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, Spanish press officer Arturo Barea and interpreter Ilsa Kulcsar, and journalists Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn.
Vernon, Alex. Hemingway’s Second War: Bearing Witness to the Spanish Civil War. University of Iowa Press, 2011.
The first book-length scholarly work on Hemingway’s journalism for the North Atlantic News Alliance, his work on the documentary The Spanish Earth, and his involvement in politics during the Spanish Civil War.
Lisa Tyler coordinates The Hemingway Review blog and serves as secretary on the board of the Hemingway Society. She has published three books on Hemingway, including the edited collections Wharton, Hemingway, and the Advent of Modernism (Louisiana State University Press, 2019) and Teaching Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (Kent State University Press, 2008). She teaches at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.