Author ‘fascinated with Scotland’

Newly uncovered pages from Ernest Hemingway’s earliest known piece of fiction have revealed his fascination with Scotland - and a squiggly transcript of a poem by Sir Walter Scott.

At just ten years old, the author wrote a fictional story about a journey from his home in Oak Park, Illinois, to Ireland and Scotland. The manuscript, considered to be the earliest example Hemingway’s fiction, was only uncovered earlier this year.

The water-stained brown book contains an account of the imaginary journey across the sea and was found in a freezer bag. It was uncovered in the archives of family friends earlier this year in Key West, near where Hemingway made his home in the 1930s.

Ernest Hemingway wrote the story when was just ten