Rice, Alfred, 1907-1989.

American writer Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway and Grace Hall. After high school, Hemingway worked briefly as a reporter for the Kansas City Star, before joining the Red Cross as an ambulance driver on the Italian war front during World War I. There, Hemingway suffered injuries to his legs and spent six months in a Red Cross hospital in Milan. Upon recovery, he returned the United States and was hired as a foreign correspondent in France for the Toronto Star. In 1921, Hemingway married Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1891-1979), the first of his four wives. In Paris, Hemingway became friends with Gertrude Stein and many other important writers and artists of the age. He published his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, in 1923, and his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926.

Hadley divorced Hemingway in January 1927, and in May of that year, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer (1895-1951). The couple moved from Paris to Key West, Florida, in early 1928, and in September, Hemingway saw the publication of A Farewell to Arms. While living in Key West, Hemingway took hunting trips to Wyoming, Kenya, and Tanganyika; sailed in the Caribbean; and traveled in France and Spain. He published To Have and Have Not in 1937, and in October of that year, Time magazine featured him on their cover.

Hemingway reported on the Spanish Civil War throughout 1937 and 1938, during which time he met journalist Martha Gellhorn (1909-1998). He separated from Pfeiffer in 1939 and lived with Gellhorn in a house called "Finca Vigia" near Havana, Cuba. They were married in December 1940. In Cuba, Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, published in October 1940. He spent much of World War II in Europe, and was present at the liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge. At the end of the war, Hemingway traveled to England where he met Time magazine correspondent Mary Welsh Monks. He and Gellhorn divorced and Hemingway quickly married Welsh. In 1951, he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, which won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize. By this time he had cemented his status as on of the most important and popular writers of his time. His works were in constant demand for publication, translation, and adaptation for radio, television, and film. He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954.

Throughout the 1950s, Hemingway suffered several traumatic injuries from two plane crashes and burns from a brush fire. In chronic pain and afflicted by hypertension, high blood pressure, and liver damage, Hemingway drank heavily and his health deteriorated further. He returned to Cuba in 1957, where he wrote his memoir A Moveable Feast. Two years later, he and Mary moved to Ketchum, Idaho. After two extended sessions of electroconvulsive therapy, he committed suicide at his Idaho home, on July 2, 1961. He left the bulk of his estate to his widow Mary.

Hemingway had three sons: John Hadley (1923-2000) with Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, Patrick (born 1928) and George (1931-2001) with Pauline Pfeiffer.

Philadelphia based lawyer Maurice J. Speiser (1880-1948) worked as Ernest Hemingway's lawyer between 1929 and Speiser's death in 1948. Speiser specialized in legal cases involving writers, musicians, and artists.

Manhattan copyright lawyer Alfred Rice (1907-1989) represented Hemingway between 1945 and Hemingway's death in 1961. After Hemingway's death, Rice represented Mary Hemingway and the remaining estate until 1969.

From the guide to the Hemingway legal files collection, 1899-1971, 1935-1960, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)