Details

Subject(s)

• Stenographers—Cuba—20th century—Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc [Browse]
• Manuscripts—20th century [Browse]
• Cuba—20th century—Description and travel [Browse]
• Havana (Cuba)—20th century—Description and travel [Browse]
• Nuffer, David [Browse]

Getty AAT genre

• Correspondence—20th century [Browse]
• Nautical charts—20th century—Cuba [Browse]
• Notebooks—20th century [Browse]
• War correspondents—United States—20th century [Browse]

Compiled/​Created

1946-2010

Restrictions note

The collection is open for research.

Summary note

• Consists of manuscripts, correspondence, stenographer's notebooks, photographs, and nautical charts associated with Walter and Juanita Houk's years in Havana, Cuba, documenting their friendship with the Nobel prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Mary.
• The collection is devoted to Ernest Hemingway in Cuba, where he lived a third of his life. It consists of manuscripts, correspondence, stenography notebooks, photographs, maps of Cuba at mid-century, and memorabilia associated with the Houks' years in Havana, documenting their friendship and interaction with the author. The material, from both the Houks' contributions, provides a robust view of the writer when producing his last major works, Across the River and into the Trees (1950) and The Old Man and the Sea(1952). Their story is told in Houk's essays over the years from the perspective of one who was there and in his manuscript memoir Havana and Hemingway, and "Nita" Jensen's half includes anecdotes and her prized letters from Ernest and Mary Hemingway, along with original shorthand notebooks and typed transcriptions of Hemingway's dictated letters (1949, in the year or so before the couple met, and 1952). Also included are photographs, described in detail by Houk, of major Hemingway landmarks in Cuba taken by his friend David Nuffer in December 2004.

Statement on responsible collection description

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