Hemingway: The Toronto Years

by William Burrill

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

392 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1994

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume will primarily be of interest to Hemingway devotees (I am not one) as it fills in some important gaps in the usual accounts of his development as an author. The years Hemingway spent as a budding journalist in the Canadian city, and more importantly, the time he spent of the Toronto Star as a European correspondent, were vital to the development of his style, particularly the time he spent in Paris commiserating with the likes of Joyce and Stein. Some of the turf covered in these pages are also discussed or at least mentioned in other biographies and studies of Hemingway, and some is of purely antiquarian interest, but anecdotes abound and the the last third of the book consists of stories written during the Toronto years that either bear Hemingway's byline or are reputably attributed to him and had not previously been published in other than their original format, and some had not been published at all. Even somewhat tepid fans of Hemingway (I am one) will doubtless find much of value in these pages.