During the 1940s, The New Yorker built its reputation by publishing some of the best writers of the time, including George Orwell, W. H. Auden, Vladimir Nabokov, and John Hersey. One writer, however, remained elusive. After his awkward parody of Frank Harris’s lightly pornographic My Life and Loves in 1927, The New Yorker had published nothing by Ernest Hemingway for over twenty years. Harold Ross, its legendary editor, resolved to change that.

In August 1948, after pursuing Hemingway for the greater part of a decade, Ross dashed off a short note. “Is it true that you’re going to Europe, and if so would you want to do some pieces for us?” Ross was thrilled when Hemingway, just before sailing, responded by asking what Ross had in mind and how much he would pay. After Hemingway had reached Paris, Ross wrote to suggest something about Hemingway’s old haunts there and how they had changed. Before Ross’s letter arrived, however, Hemingway had moved on to Northern Italy from where he proposed a piece on “the environs of Venice.”

Venice, however, was the last thing Ross had in mind, as he had just agreed that topic with another writer, Alan Moorehead. After a painful few days, Ross declined Hemingway’s offer, but asked him to contact him “by mail, wire, pigeon, or somehow if you get any more urges for pieces.” Offended, Hemingway never did, and a year later Moorehead’s “Letter from Venice,” a description of the “slow, sweet poison”