Where Hemingway Wrote: Five Books, Five Places

During an extended 1928 stay with Pauline Pfeiffer's family in Piggott, Hemingway wrote portions of A Farewell to Arms on this property. The wording matters: Arkansas contributed to the manuscript, but the first draft was completed later that summer in Wyoming. The family later developed the barn as Hemingway's dedicated writing studio; A-State's chronology dates a major renovation to 1932. Restored to its 1930s appearance, the studio is now the centerpiece of a literary museum and hosts contemporary writers—an afterlife for a private working retreat.

At 907 Whitehead Street, Hemingway used the second-floor room above the carriage house as his writing studio. During his Key West years he wrote To Have and Have Not, the novel most directly rooted in Depression-era Key West and the waters between Florida and Cuba. The house also preserves one of its most repeated domestic stories: after the expensive swimming pool was built, Hemingway pressed a penny into the surrounding paving and joked that it was the last of his money. Visitors can still look for it near the pool.

Hemingway worked on For Whom the Bell Tolls in several places, but Sun Valley Lodge supplies the manuscript's clearest finishing address. The resort records that he completed the novel in Room 206 after first coming to Sun Valley in 1939. The visit began a connection with Idaho that lasted for the rest of his life. The room number gives this sweeping Spanish Civil War novel an unexpectedly compact endpoint: one hotel room in a newly built American ski resort.