The Big Read at Kansas City Public Library

Well, that might be saying a bit much. It couldn’t have been that merry since all but one of the marriages dissolved.

But all of the women in Ernest Hemingway’s life were very important to him and played large roles in his literary pursuits.

Elizabeth Hadley Richardson was a native of St. Louis and married Hemingway in 1921. She is the mother of his first son, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway, whom Ernest nicknamed “Bumby”.

Hadley, as she preferred to be called, accompanied Hemingway to Paris where they became close friends with many other members of the self-dubbed “Lost Generation.”

They remained friendly after their divorce, but literary scholars may not be so friendly towards Hadley. She lost a valise of Hemingway’s short stories, essays and other writings in the Paris Metro.