The Transatlantic Review

The Transatlantic Review appears in the book as both a literary venue and a possible source of income: it carried Gertrude Stein’s experimental writing in serial form and offered Hemingway a prospective market for stories while he and Hadley Richardson lived economically. Its place in these episodes connects the practical limits of periodical publishing with the uncertain work of sustaining a writing life.

A venue for experimental writing

Hemingway persuaded Ford Madox Ford to publish Stein’s The Making of Americans serially in The Transatlantic Review. The novel began with brilliance, in Hemingway’s assessment, but extended into repetitions he believed a more conscientious writer would have cut. He knew it closely because he read all of Stein’s proofs for her; the work itself gave her no pleasure. His account thus presents the review not simply as a place where experimental writing appeared, but as a publication whose finite life and editorial process became entangled with an exceptionally long, demanding book. Hemingway knew the serialization would outlast the review’s own life.

A prospective market for Hemingway

The review also figures in Hemingway’s discussion with Stein about whether his stories could earn money. Stein teased that he could sell to Ford, and the conversation set out a possible rate of thirty francs per page. At one story every three months and five pages per story, the calculation came to 150 francs per quarter, or 600 francs a year. The figures describe a modest hypothetical income, not confirmed sales; Hemingway’s immediate concern was that he could write stories but that nobody would buy them, and that no money had come in since he left journalism.

Part of a precarious literary economy

Hemingway later names The Transatlantic Review among the outlets to which he was selling stories, alongside the Frankfurter Zeitung, Der Querschnitt, and This Quarter. He and Hadley were living with great economy, spending only on necessities as they saved for trips to Pamplona, Madrid, and Valencia. In that context, the review belongs to a wider network of potential and actual periodical income, rather than standing alone as a dependable livelihood. Its significance in the narrative rests on this double role: it could provide a home for ambitious writing, yet the small sums imagined for short stories underline how uncertain the material support for literary work remained.