Kansas City, Mo. ? The recent discovery of a never-published Ernest Hemingway tale may not have been much of a find after all.

News of the five-page story by one of the best-known American authors of this century began circulating Monday with a front-page article in The New York Times.

But the supposedly lost manuscript — a lighthearted account of a 1924 bullfight — has been known among scholars for years and two typed copies have been held at the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston since 1982, according to The Kansas City Star, where the author once worked.

“We knew that this was not a single exclusive copy,” said Bendetta Roux, a spokeswoman at Christie’s, where the story entitled “My Life in the Bull Ring With Donald Ogden Stewart” is to be auctioned off in December. “We didn’t know about this one. This is a newly discovered version.”

Donald Stewart, the son of the heroic bullfighter who is the story’s central character, found the manuscript in an envelope left by his father, who died in 1980.

It is not known how many copies of the manuscript there are, but custodians of Hemingway’s estate have not granted permission for the story to be published.

Roux said the story was still an attractive buy for a collector.

“Hemingway is a much sought-after writer and even to have some of his writings, even if it’s not a handwritten manuscript, there’s a large audience out there collecting,” Roux said.