Hemingway was a famous novelist, but he was also a prolific short story writer. Many of his stories involved the character of Nick Adams, who seems to have been something of an alter-ego. After Hemingway’s death, these stories were compiled into a single volume and additional stories that were unfinished were included. The stories were arranged into order by when they would have occurred in Adams’ life, rather than publication order. However, there are not many clues in the stories themselves about how old he is supposed to be, so I am wondering:

1. How was this order determined?

2. Are there any controversies surrounding the ordering (i.e., some scholars disagree)?

3. Most specifically, I am wondering about the placement of “The Last Good Country” and “Crossing the Mississippi” at the end of the “On His Own” section (young adulthood, prior to WWI), rather than at the beginning of the section (i.e., before “The Light of the World”).

In the first story of that section, “The Light of the World”, Adams is away from home, traveling with another person, a hothead named Tommy. At one point, Adams says their ages are 17 and 19. It is ambiguous which character is supposed to go with which age, but under the polite convention that you mention someone else before yourself, I (weakly) interpret this as meaning Nick is 19. In the other two published stories, “The Battler” and “The Killers”, Adams is away from home and Tommy is no longer around. These do seem to be slightly later. But in “The Last Good Country” he is home, living with his Mother and younger sister, who is 12. Nick has to flee living at home due to a run in with the law. Initially, his sister comes with him and they are going to live in the woods for a couple weeks, but it becomes clear to him that this will not be workable. So at the (sort of) end of the story, he is taking her back home, and it is implied that he is going to light out on his own. He has $36 in cash on him. I don’t know what year this would be or how much money that is, but I would imagine it’s a decent amount for any year that would be reasonable. The last story is “Crossing the Mississippi”, which is extremely short and relays his experience of crossing the Mississippi river for the first time. He is a passenger on a passenger train (whereas he had been hoboing just before the beginning of “The Battler”). Putting all this together, it seems most natural to me that the unpublished stories would be earlier in his life, chronicling how he came to leave home.

The given order implies that he left home, came back, then left again. That is certainly within the realm of possibility, but it is a more complex sequence, so Occam’s razor would militate against it. It also seems less consistent with the various details in the stories, although again, they are hardly dispositive. Does anyone know how the given order was determined? For example, was there a master list in Hemingway’s notes or something?