American writer Ernest Hemingway's legacy is under debate with publication of A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition. (Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Getty Images)

A man who was one of Ernest Hemingway's oldest friends is calling a new revised edition of the memoir A Moveable Feast a fraud and a disservice to the famed writer's memory.

A.E. Hotchner, author of the biography Papa Hemingway, first knew Hemingway in the 1950s.

He said the newly published book A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition is an attempt by Hemingway's son and grandson to rewrite history.

Hemingway's only living son, Patrick Hemingway, 81, and his grandson, Sean Hemingway, are saying the version they've published with Hemingway's original publisher Scribner is a truer representation of the author's intention for the book.

"In all the manuscript material that Hemingway left, the impression was given that A Moveable Feast really was completed, and that was so misleading," Patrick Hemingway said in a statement from the publisher.

"People will find out — none of it, the preface, ending, the title — none of it was done when he died."

The family contends Hemingway's fourth wife, Mary, who was married to him when he committed suicide in 1961, put the book together.

But Hotchner said he delivered the manuscript himself from Hemingway to Scribner in New York.

"This notion of cobbling together this book has only arisen just now, when this bowdlerization of his book was just published," Hotchner said in an interview with Q, CBC's cultural affairs show.

"The notion that he didn't mean to publish is sheer nonsense," he added. "The book that he gave me to take to New York is exactly the book that he published."

The book was delayed by the psychological crisis Hemingway had in his final years, he contends. A Moveable Feast was published posthumously.

Family agenda

The Restored Edition is an attempt by that branch of the family to redeem the reputation of Hemingway's second wife, Pauline, who "vamped him away" from Hadley, his first wife, Hotchner said.

"They've cut out all the references to his second wife that they didn't like. They also cut out 10 other chapters that they stuck in the back of the book and substituted other things," Hotchner said.

A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's memoir of bohemian life in 1920s Paris, is dedicated to Hadley, his first wife and the only woman Hemingway ever loved, Hotchner said.

Hotchner recalled the lunch at the Paris Ritz in the 1950s when Charles Ritz reminded Hemingway of the trunk he'd left in the basement of the hotel.

"At the bottom [of the trunk] were six or seven schoolboy notebooks. Ernest exclaimed 'There they are! I wondered what I'd done with them.' Those were notebooks he'd written in the 1920s and essentially became A Moveable Feast," Hotchner said.

Hemingway's version is an incomparable portrait of Paris and "masterwork," but this new edition is a "fraudulent piece of work," he said.

Hotchner said he understands the family's desire to clean up Pauline's reputation and blames Scribner for agreeing to publish the new edition.

"The publisher is the custodian of a writer's work — it's his job to protect it from censorship, and this is a censorship," he said.

Publishers have a responsibility not to change an author's work to make a few dollars, he said, adding that he hopes the Authors Guild will take up the cause.