Collecting Books of Legendary Authors: Ernest Hemingway

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best — make it all up —
but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.
Hemingway, in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Biography

hemingway_ernest

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. A writer and journalist, he is best known for his novels The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952). He volunteered for an ambulance unit during World War I and later became a leading member of the "Lost Generation." His terse, understated prose made an indelible mark on 20th century literature and his persona as a sportsman and adventurer inspired generations of followers. Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in 1954, shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He nearly died in two plane crashes and the injuries he sustained left him in pain for his remaining years. In 1961, Hemingway committed suicide at his home in Idaho.

Rivalry with F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Fitzgerald and Hemingway were born only three years apart. When they met in 1925 Fitzgerald had just published The Great Gatsby and seemed to be a rising star. Hemingway on the other hand, was still relatively unknown. The two were soon fast friends, but eventually the relationship went sour; Hemingway was embarrassed by Fitzgerald's drunken shenanigans, and the two eventually fell out. The rivalry was so epic that Scott Donaldson even chronicled it in Hemingway v Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship.

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Bibliographies

Audre Hanneman: Ernest Hemingway, A Comprehensive Bibliography
Essential for any Hemingway collector and viewed as a significant contribution to the study of Hemingway's writings and related materials.

Louis Henry Cohn: A Bibliography Of The Works Of Ernest Hemingway
An important bibliography for the Hemingway collector and a less comprehensive but viable alternative to Audre Hanneman's works.

C. Edgar Grissom: Ernest Hemingway: A Descriptive Bibliography
The culmination of all previous endeavour in Hemingway bibliography, correcting the work of previous bibliographies.

 

Relationship with Martha Gellhorn

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Sometimes love strikes in unexpected places. Such was the case for Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway, who met for the first time at Hemingway's Sloppy Joe's bar in Key West. Gellhorn had just published The Trouble I've Seen, an eyewitness account of Americans' struggles during the Great Depression. Hemingway was already famous--and married. Several months later, the pair found themselves in Spain to cover the civil war. Following a torrid affair, Hemingway divorced his wife and married Gellhorn. But Gellhorn's career as a journalist wore on their relationship. Gellhorn, who famously said she refused to be a "footnote in someone else's life," wouldn't give up journalism for Hemingway, and the couple were divorced in 1945.

Hemingway vs. Faulkner

Ernest Hemingway was not known for getting along well with others. From Ford Madox Ford to one-time literary friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway had insults for just about everyone. Hemingway commented that one of his own early poems “Ultimately” is “bad enough to fit perfectly into a collection of Faulkner's 'early shit.'" In a letter to Owen Wister, Hemingway called Faulkner a "no-good son of a bitch" and Faulkner’s novel Sanctuary “pretty phony.”

His slams got the best of him and in September of 1932, Robert Coates, writer for The New Yorker scolded Hemingway’s childish comments on Faulkner’s work, to which he replied “There weren’t any cracks against Faulkner” and he has “plenty of respect for Faulkner and wish[es] him the best of luck”.


 

Featured Ernest Hemingway Books

A Farewell to Arms

Hokum: A Play in Three Acts

Marlin!

Ernest Hemingway: Farewell To Arms

Ernest Hemingway: Hokum

Ernest Hemingway: Marlin
Ernest Hemingway published A Farewell to Arms in 1929, and the novel met with instant success--it sold so well that it made Hemingway financially independent. A Farewell to Arms has endured as one of the greatest war novels in American literature and is inspired by Hemingway's own experiences in Italy during the First World War. Hemingway's biographer Michael Reynolds calls A Farewell to Arms "the premier American war novel from that debacle [World War I]." But he also warns that even though the novel was certainly inspired by events in Hemingway's life, we must not read too much reality into the novel's pages Hokum is the co-authored play in three acts by Ernest Hemingway and Morris McNeil, copyrighted by McNeil in 1921. Although published for the first time in 1978, it is Hemingway's first professional work, completed two years before Three Stories and Ten Poems, published in France in 1923. A lighthearted comedy, it tells the tale of a poor artist who decides to marry a rich society girl. The play was lost for decades until a rare book dealer located a copy in the United States Copyright Office.

An avid fisherman, Ernest Hemingway described his marlin fishing adventures for the July 1949 issue of Holiday Magazine. Hemingway wrote of his experiences in great detail, describing everything up to his tackle specifications. Republished in a fine press edition by Big Fish Books, the book includes an introduction by Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez as well as original woodcuts by Neil Shigley and vivid photographs of Hemingway and his crew. A limited edition printing of 1,000.

The Old Man and the Sea C. Edgar Grissom: Ernest Hemingway: A Descriptive Bibliography True At First Light
 Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man And The Sea  Grissom Bibliography  Ernest Hemingway: True At First Light

Hemingway's hugely successful story of the old fisherman landing the biggest fish in his life. Basis for the motion picture starring Spencer Tracy. Winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize.  

The September Issue of Life XXXIII (Volume 33) marks the first appearance in print of The Old Man and the Sea; published 11 days in advance of the book's publication. The full 27,000 word novella on twenty pages of the Life magazine.

The culmination of all previous endeavour in Hemingway bibliography, correcting the work of previous bibliographies. Grissom's work is the only Hemingway bibliography to classify edition, printing, issue, and state and provide a classical description. Both revealing self-portrait and dramatic fictional chronicle of his final African safari, Ernest Hemingway's last unpublished work was written when he returned from Kenya in 1953. Edited by his son Patrick, who accompanied his father on the safari, True at First Light offers rare insights into the legendary American writer.


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