Hemingway scholars have found what they the say is the earliest example of the author’s fiction – a 14-page account of an imaginary journey through Ireland and Scotland written at the age of 10.

The water-stained brown notebook was discovered in a ziploc freezer bag inside an ammunition box among the archives of family friends earlier this year in Key West, near where Hemingway made his home in the 1930s.

Rather than describing frozen leftovers, the label read: “September 8, 1909, EH diary to Europe”.