"It's déjà vu all over again." - Yogi Berra

5 out of 5 for Papaphiles
3 out of 5 for the General Reader

Your enthusiasm or frustration with this will likely depend on your degree of interest in Hemingway minutiae. The Hemingway Library Edition of The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway presents 2 juvenilia stories ("Judgment of Manitou" and the previously unpublished fragment "Untitled Milan Story") and 24 mature stories (arguably a "Best of" the 85-or-so published stories to date) along with all available draft versions/excerpts of them.

You could extend that count of 26 stories by a further 2 posthumously published stories by noting that "Indian Camp" Appendix 5a contains the fragment "Three Shots" and that "Big Two-Hearted River" Appendix 9c contains the fragment "On Writing" both of which were previously edited and collected in "The Nick Adams Stories" (1972).

All that being said, even the most devoted Papaphile will likely find their patience being tested as they read through the 5 draft versions/excerpts of "Up in Michigan" labelled as 3a to 3e. These do not seem to be so extraordinarily different from each other or the final story version to excite much interest. Those 5 drafts are an exception as most of the stories here have only 1 or 2 early drafts included, but it makes for a rocky start since "Up in Michigan" is at the front end of the book and you begin to wonder whether you have the patience to read infinitesimal variations on stories back to back. Once over the hump though, it becomes easier sailing. You begin to look for the cuts and edits made and have the benefit of hindsight in deciding how well they served the story in the end.

Aside from having the unedited view of "Three Shots" and "On Writing" the only other draft that seemed to have an extensive segment that was cut (likely censored) from the final story was a 2 page section of "A Way You'll Never Be" 20a where Hemingway-proxy character Nick Adams in World War I witnesses his Italian friend the Maggiore passing judgment on two trench soldiers caught in flagrante delicto (he lets them off with a warning).

To sum up, this "Best of" collection with drafts that includes the gems like "Indian Camp", "Cat in the Rain", "Big Two-Hearted River", "Hills Like White Elephants", "The Sea Change", "A Clean Well-Lighted Place", "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" will always get 5 stars from me. But I can understand some finding this present format a bit of a trial. Try to vary your reading experience from the standard front to back by selecting in order of your favourites & also reading drafts first and then the final. That should help alleviate the "déjà vu all over again" pattern somewhat.

Appendix (Details for Completists)

The Everyman Library edition of "The Collected Stories" (1995) remains the optimal book for obtaining the most complete collection of Ernest Hemingway short stories as it includes juvenilia ("Judgment of Manitou" and 7 others), the posthumous Nick Adams stories ("Three Shots", "On Writing" and 6 others) and 7 posthumous additions from "The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway" (1987) as well as 9 previously uncollected stories on top of the standard canon of "The First Forty-Nine" which have been the mainstay since "The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories" (1939).

Everyman's "The Collected Stories" is however missing the 3 novel sections (2 from "To Have and Have Not" and 1 from "The Garden of Eden") which were excerpted as stories in "The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway" (1987). Those can obviously be obtained in the novels instead.

With this publication of the "Hemingway Library Edition", the Everyman is also missing the now newly published "Untitled Milan Story" fragment.

All of the above are missing "My Life in the Bull Ring with Donald Ogden Stewart" (1924) a short story rejected by Vanity Fair in 1925 and left unpublished until it was included in its letter attachment format in "The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 2, 1923-1925".

Link
For more on "My Life in the Bull Ring with Donald Ogden Stewart" see https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/27/ernest-hemingway-short-story ( )