This is a pretty simple question, isn’t it? How many books did one of the most famous writers in American history write? well… maybe not. there are many books hemingway wrote that were published during his lifetime, both fiction and non-fiction, but do you count creative booklets (a common practice among many budding authors in the early 20th century) and books published after hemingway? his death?
I’m inclined to say if it’s the size of a book, count it, but not everyone feels the same way. there are also collections of hemingway’s letters and works that were collected after he died, so do they count? they are all works by hemingway, but they were never collected by him because they were not intended to be independent works, at least not by him.
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It is generally accepted that Ernest Hemingway wrote at least 16 books, consisting of 7 novels, 6 collections of short stories, and 3 non-fiction books. Beyond the agreed upon 16 scholars argue for multiple posthumously published hemingway works, meaning the accepted range of published hemingway books can be as low as 16 or as high as 28, though most put the number between 19 and 20.
I’m also inclined to put the number at 19, but we’ll delve into the question of how many books did ernest hemingway write so you can see why this seemingly simple question generates so much debate.
Let’s get started!
hemingway’s 16 agreed upon books
Let’s start with the 16 that virtually no one disputes and everyone agrees count as real books in the Ernest Hemingway bibliography. nobody disputes that he has done more works, but these are the 16 that are agreed as books or works the size of a book.
hemingway novels
- The torrents of spring (1926)
- The sun also rises (1926)
- A farewell to arms (1929)
- To have and I have not (1937)
- for whom the bell tolls (1940)
- across the river and among the trees (1950)
- the old man and the sea (1952)
hemingway’s collections of stories
- three stories and ten poems (1923)
- in our time (1924 with enlarged reprint of 1925)
- men without women (1927)
- the winner takes nothing (1933)
- the fifth column and the first forty-nine stories (1938)
- the snows of kilimanjaro and other stories (1961)
non-fiction
- Death in the Afternoon (1932)
- The Green Hills of Africa (1935)
- A Moving Party (posthumously published – 1964)*
*some would argue that there are only 15 works by hemingway as a moving party should not be included as it was published after his death but this is a very minority opinion as hemingway did a lot of work on this collection when passed away. away and is considered part of the base canon of his works.
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These were books that were mostly published during his lifetime, or in the case of a moving party, it was all new material that Hemingway was preparing when he passed away, making it a solid addition to his canon of work.
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then why do many people argue that the number is in the 20s or even common google answers fall under the line of “at least x books…”?
well we’ll dive into that, including many books that most people consider competitive enough to be considered part of the hemingway book list, those that are controversial, and the published hemingway collections that are generally considered external collections versus new works by the author.
the challenges of numbering hemingway’s books
one of the main challenges in deciding how to tell ernest hemingway’s lifetime collection of written works is overlap. due to many short story collections, it was not uncommon for short stories from an earlier book to also be included in a later one, to be combined to create a later one. so if a collection is 20 short stories but only 2 originals…do you really count that?
There were also multiple limited runs of long non-fiction, short stories, and stories that straddled the line between short story and novella. there is at least one example of a stage play based on the play, much like the modern equivalent of writing the movie script of your own plays. does this count as work? most would say no, but isn’t a play just a different kind of novel?
so, after that initial list of books that are considered pretty much accepted as part of the ernest hemingway canon of books, what other titles are out there that may or may not be accepted?
Let’s dive in and take a look at a long list of works by Hemingway that he was working on that were unpublished at the time of his death.
disputed hemingway books
These are “discussed” books, although most scholars, collectors, and readers accept several of them as a Hemingway-published book, and therefore should be added to the total. others reprint a lot of old material with a handful of new stories, and depending on the title you’re talking about, this can lead to some pretty heated debates about what should and shouldn’t be told.
Usually these come in the form of posthumous works, as Hemingway’s works not included on this list made during his lifetime were plays, long stories, limited editions, works that stand out to collectors of works by hemingway first edition, but not anything to be generally mistaken for an actual book.
posthumous hemingway novels
There are three major Hemingway novels published after his death, two of which are novels and one is nonfiction. two of them tend to be generally accepted by many scholars and academics as part of the hemingway canon and one is fiercely debated, especially when it comes to general media backlash
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Islands in the Creek was published in 1970 and is generally considered canon. this is probably the best known of the post-death works with perhaps the exception of a mobile party.
The Garden of Eden was a novel published in 1986 and was the culmination of 15 years of writing during his lifetime as he struggled to put the story together and launched many other stories and novels during that time.
The Dangerous Summer was released in 1985 and was a non-fiction project that Hemingway had worked on for the last two years of his life investigating the real-life account of a rivalry between two that resulted in tricks and displays every time. more dangerous that lead to the severe goring of one of them. Bullfighting had long been a Hemingway interest in life, and is cited by many as Hemingway’s last novel (source).
Finally, True at First Light was a nonfiction book published in 1999 and was about his safari in East Africa with his fourth wife in the early 1950s. This book received a lot of negative reviews and actually , sparked a debate about how posthumous works should be handled and at what point a later edited and published book should be considered canon or non-canon.
Most of these works are considered canon and the most important arguments come true at first glance, where there is much debate as to whether or not it should be included in academic circles.
other “hemingway books” published after his death
There were other collections that are mostly made up of works by Hemingway, and some of them are delightful reads, but not generally considered part of his canon. This is in part because many of these are collections of previous articles, news pieces, or collections of non-fiction stories/pieces from magazines brought together in book form.
The short list of these includes:
- hemingway, the wild years (1962)
- per line: ernest hemingway (1967)
- ernest hemingway: puppy reporter (1970)
- date line: toronto (1985)
- under kilimanjaro (2005)
very few people consider any of these posthumous publications to be part of the ernest hemingway canon, and under kilimanjaro there are directly two editors rewriting an earlier work by hemingway, so in a way it’s even less, but for people who they see no reason while magazine, newspaper, and other interwoven pieces of non-fiction shouldn’t count, the other four listed can be debated.
Usually these are seen as external collections of hemingway’s work but not canon to the author himself and that’s a reading that makes a lot of sense to me. “complete works by x author” don’t count against the canon of what an author writes, so why would they?
in conclusion
When it comes to Ernest Hemingway, it should come as no surprise that a legendary American writer has a long history of publishing. While some debate remains over exactly how many books Hemingway should be credited for considering how much of his writing was published after his death (sometimes many decades after the fact), if someone wanted to answer 16, 19, or 20 to the question of how many books? wrote ernest hemingway, there are valid arguments that could be made for those three totals.
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