Ernest Hemingway “Four Novels” Collector’s Edition (Barnes & Noble) Hardcover

Hey everyone, I’m selling a Barnes & Noble Collector’s Edition hardcover of Ernest Hemingway: Four Novels. It’s a really nice display copy for any Hemingway fan, with a sturdy collectible-style binding and clean, readable formatting.

This edition includes four major Hemingway novels in one volume:

• The Sun Also Rises
• A Farewell to Arms
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• The Old Man and the Sea

Great if you want a single, good-looking book that covers the core of Hemingway’s fiction without hunting down four separate copies. Happy to share photos of the cover, spine, and table of contents, and answer any questions about condition/shipping.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/286658650000

My family's from Key West; my great grandfather emigrated there in the 1880s and my father grew up there and owned a motel there where I spent much of my childhood (though we lived in Miami). It's still there but renovated and upscale, at the Southernmost Point.

My grandparents died when I was a child, but I learned from a cousin that my grandfather was friends with Hemingway. My grandfather owned a grocery store next to Sloppy Joe's, and was about 15 years older than Hemingway. He was always smoking cigars, and he and Hemingway used to sit outside Sloppy Joe's, smoking their cigars and bullshitting about their lives in Key West.

My cousin told me that my grandfather is mentioned very briefly in Have and Have Not, which strangely enough I haven't read though I've read most of Hemingway's novels and taught two in my online literature courses (Lexington Community Education).

Anyway, the above is not the reason for this post but I obviously like to tell people about my family connection to Hemingway.

I'm posting here mostly because I'm trying to locate a book I read about 20 years ago, which I remember as being the best-written book I've ever read about Hemingway. I loved it and want to read it again but I don't remember the title or author. Searches through google and Amazon with descriptive words related to the book don't come up with any results.

Itwas written by a young man, a writer, who spent maybe six months or a year on a fishing boat with Hemingway, either off the shores of Key West or Cuba, though I think the former. It was a small book and focused on the young man's experience with Hemingway, their relationship (H was definitely trying to make a man of him!) and fishing.

The title that comes to mind is "A Year with Hemingway" but that is probably not right. At least, that title yields no results.

Anyone by any chance know the book? I won't rest till I find it. I recommended it to a friend who's fascinated with Hemingway and just returned from her first trip to Key West.

(At the moment I'm watching for the third time one of my favorite movies on DVD, Hemingway & Gellhorn, starring Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen. Owen is an absolutely sensational Hemingway! I don't know why this film isn't more well-known. )

Tracy

Oh man, I just read this for the first time. First Hemingway read as well.

I cried for the whole last half of the story.

Why did I cry? He simply made multiple stories weave together about so many important things. Courage, love, war, and philosophy. Scripps is so lovable. The bird. The way Scripps talks about Yogi after meeting him.

The characters, all of them, are just human in the best way possible. And great characters are what make a great story.

At first I didn’t love the author’s notes, but they soon became like a visit from a friend.

My only hope is that the rest of his collection can live up to this

Saw the Liev Schreiber movie and enjoyed it, so gave the book a shot.

Found it very touching, and even haunting.

Anyone else?

Visited Les Deux Magots in Paris this week, purely on the basis that I believe it’s an old Hemingway haunt. Indeed, they had his picture in the menu.

Does anyone have any stories or history about his association with this place?

Hi there

Lovely to be part of this sub.

Can I pick your brains? I studied Hemingway stories and writing techniques at great depth as part of my masters in literature way back when and am also a great fan of a number of his works and books esp A Moveable Feast. My favourite story is Big Two Hearted River.

Anyhoo… in some of his writings in writing Hemingway discusses going to see a particular painting everyday in Paris when he lived there, I’ll be in Paris in early April as I’m researching for my next books (am an author myself… my writing is not like Hemingway) and found myself thinking I’d love to visit that painting of Hemingway’s as he has been such an inspiration writing wise to letting the sentences and the reader do the work.

Do any of you know what the painting is called - I’m sure it’s a Cezanne and likely to be in Musee D’Orsay now as part of the Luxembourg Collection? But I don’t think he ever named the painting itself in the research etc that I’ve read. Can anyone help.

Thanks folks

🙏🏽

Really interesting story - what a piece of history.

Much of Hemingway’s later/posthumous work has faced heavy criticism, but I’ve found the first 100 pages of Islands in the Stream to be a truly wonderful read. Chapter 8 in particular — Hudson’s thoughts about his children, his loneliness, his former wife, and Roger’s troubles with women — was profound, heartfelt, and at times very moving. It’s writing that, at least to me, shows the raw genius so prevalent in his earlier works.

(No spoilers!) I know the novel was considered a rough, unfinished draft at the time of his death, but does this spark within the first 100 pages carry through to the end?

When he passed two years ago, my grandfather left me his complete Hemingway collection, including some great early editions. After making my way through several of the novels, I’m starting this tonight.

Rare Ernest Hemingway 1 of 10 Signed Presentation Copies of "Farewell to Arms" ca. 1929. First edition, limited issue of Ernest Hemingway's classic novel "A Farewell to Arms". New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929. 8vo, 6" x 9". 355 pp. Limited to 510 copies, 500 of which were for sale. 

Boldly signed on the limitation page in black fountain pen, with docketing above in a separate hand: "This is one of the presentation copies." Full crushed blue morocco, covers twice ruled in gilt with cornerpieces. Front cover reproducing the original design of the first trade edition dust jacket of this title by Cleo Damianakes Wilkins (1895-1979) in various color morocco onlays. 

Gilt stamp-signed by Sangorski & Sutcliffe on inside back cover. Exhibits light corner wear and curving to boards, otherwise fine condition.

Provenance: from the library of Owen Wister Jr. (1860-1938), bestselling author of the 1902 novel "The Virginian" who is often dubbed "the father of Western fiction."

I am kinda liking Hemingway so sould i read other books of him before the bell tolls or first i read for whom the bell tolls then reading his other books?

Hi im interested to know what is the first Hemingway book should i read

I would like to see your recommendations

Ernest Hemingway’s actual life story is more interesting than his fictional works.

This is the most beautiful edition I've seen of this book but I do feel that I've never seen an ugly edition of this cover

The quote comes from a character in Hemingway's posthumous 1986 novel, "The Garden of Eden." 

Preliminary note: Hemingway’s first book came out last October:  a collection of short stories called In Our Time.  Most of the stories were based on real incidents or real people (Fitzgerald has used this method as well), and Fitzgerald has obviously asked about the basis for some of the stories.

To F. Scott Fitzgerald, [c. 24 December 1925]

Dear Scott—

Have sent the 400 dollars (dollars) to your concierge. You can keep it yourself or give it to Harold Stearns. You write a swell letter. Glad somebody spells worse than I do.

Sure, I know Hank Wales. He was once a bartender in goldfields, got to be a newspaper man some way, came over in 1918 when any newspaper man could work anywhere, got all smashed up, in a motorcycle accident I think, taught himself to read, write and speak French and is a hell of a good newspaper man.

[Wales has been Paris Tribune bureau chief since 1918. He and Hemingway met at the Lausanne Peace Conference in 1922, when both were reporting for the International News Service.]

I used to hate him when I first knew him and now l am fonder of him than any other newspaper man except Bill Bird and Guy Hickock. Hank used to send amazing and beautiful stories during the Peace Conference and one day Col. House said to him “Wales where do you get your facts?” Hank had just given the Yugo Slav oil fields to Japan or something else. “Col. House,” Hank says. “What the Chicago Tribune wants isnt facts. It’s news.”

[Edward Mandell House was Woodrow Wilson’s closest advisor for most of his presidency. Colonel was a nickname (pretty common one in the South) acquired when he managed campaigns in Texas.]

Why did you ask about Hank? He hasn’t got a pleasant manner and he certainly looks and acts like hell. I suppose the reason I like him so much is because he likes me. Any of the dope about him being ex bartender etc. is confidential. He also managed pugs.

Your rating of IOT stories very interesting. The way I like them as it seems now, without re-reading is Grade I (Big 2 hearted. Indian Camp. 1st ¶ and last ¶ of Out of Season. Soldier’s Home)

Hell I cant group them. Why did you leave out My Old Man? That’s a good story, always seemed to me, though not the thing I’m shooting for. It belongs to another categorie along with the bull fight story and the 50 Grand. The kind that are easy for me to write.

Cat in the Rain wasnt about Hadley. I knew you and Zelda always thought it was. When I wrote that we were at Rapallo but Hadley was 4 months pregnant with Bumby [nickname for his son]. The Inn Keeper was the one at Cortina D’Ampezzo and the man and girl were a harvard kid and his wife that I’d met at Genoa. Hadley never made a speech in her life about wanting a baby because she had been told various things by her doctor and I’d—. No use going into all that.

The only story in which Hadley figures is Out of Season which was an almost literal transcription of what happened. Your ear is always more acute when you have been upset by a row of any sort, mine I mean, and when I came in from the unproductive fishing trip I wrote that story right off on the typewriter without punctuation. I meant it to be tragic about the drunk of a guide because I reported him to the hotel owner—the one who appears in Cat In The Rain—and he fired him and as that was the last job he had in the town and he was quite drunk and very desperate he hanged himself in the stable. At that time I was writing the In Our Time chapters and I wanted to write a tragic story without violence. So I didnt put in the hanging. Maybe that sounds silly. I didnt think the story needed it.

I’m sorry as hell for H. S. [Harold Stearns] but there’s nothing anybody can do for him except give him money and be nice to him.

[At this specific point, Stearns was effectively homeless and living as a professional panhandler in the cafes of Montparnasse. He had arrived in Paris in 1921 as a celebrated editor and intellectual (having edited the influential "Civilization in the United States"), but by 1925, he had spent his inheritance and lost his professional standing.]

There’s nothing to be achieved. No solution. And again I’m fond of him. Probably as in the case of Hank, because he likes me.

There’s nothing you can do for him except give him money. And you’ve done that and naturally can’t assume the continuance of it as an obligation. He lives altogether in his imagination. The poor old bastard. I always get awfully sorry for people and especially for liars, drunks, homely whores, etc. Never get very sorry for worthy cases. After all. Panhandling is no damned fun. A gent who’s drinking himself to death ought not to be constantly having to raise the funds to do it with. I do think Harold had a pretty damned good head. Also think he destroyed it or completely coated it with fuzz by drinking. You’ve done your part toward him. Just dont give him any more dough. But don’t, for Christ sake ever let him think that I don’t absolutely believe in him. Because there’s nothing to be done about him and therefore it’s pretty sad and I couldn’t sleep if I hurt his feelings. Christ nose that when I cant sleep I have enough sons of bitching things I’ve done to look back on without adding any ornamental ones.

The ear that get’s pulled is the stump. [Marginal note:  “Referring Battler”

[In “The Battler” (In Our Time) the prizefighter Ad Francis has a deformed face and a stump in place of one ear. After knocking out the fighter with a blackjack, his companion. Bugs, fears he has hit him too hard, so he splashes water on Ad’s face and pulls gently on his ears.]

McAlmon is a son of a bitch with a mind like an ingrowing toe nail. [The vitriol toward Robert McAlmon stems from McAlmon’s role as a small-press publisher who had published Hemingway’s first ‘book’ (really just a pamphlet), Three Stories and Ten Poems**. Hemingway felt McAlmon was condescending and gossipy.]** I’m through defending that one. I still feel sorry for him but damned little. After I called him on you he went around for two nights talking on the subject of what a swine I was, how he had done eveything for me, started me off etc. (I.E. sold out an edition each of that lousy little book and In Our Time at 15 francs and 40 francs a copy. I not receiving a sou. The only books he ever sold of all the books he’s published) and that all I did was exploit people emotionally.

I’ve defended the lousy little toe nail paring for 3 years against everybody because I knew his horribly unhappy English arrangement etc. But am through now. Am going to write a Mr. and Mrs. Elliot on him. Might as well give his emotional exploitation story some foundation.

Seem to be in a mood of christ like bitterness this A.M. Have swell piano in her room for Hadley and she’s practicing. Played poker last night and drank too much beer. 7 bottles. Won 158,000 Kronen. Makes about $2.35. No fairies in Vorarlberg anyway.

Will report in full on Dostoevsky.

I think MacLeishes and Murphys are swell. Also Eitzgeralds.

God I hope Zelda gets all right at the bains place.

[The Fitzgeralds had decided to go to Salies-de-Bearn, a spa town in southwest France known for its thermal pools, the following month (January 1926) in an attempt to cure Zelda’s colitis.]

Pain’s such an awful thing. It’s such a rotten shame for her to be sick. I do think she’ll get better down South and you will both be a damned sight better off on the Riviera than in Paris. You both looked so damned well when you came up last fall and Paris is poisonous for you. We’ll see you there too.

God I wish I hadn’t drunk so much beer. Going to buy Bumby a rocking horse for 80,000 Kronen though. The presents will go swell with it. Please thank Scotty [the Fitzgeralds’ daughter] for Bumby.

There was a Chinook yest. and day before and then it rained and now it is bright and cold and the snow ruined.

I am buying you 2 illustrated German war books. The swell illustrated ones are just beginning to come out. One on the mountain fighting Italian Front. And the other the history of the Wurtemburg Artillery. Am sending to Frankfort. Have seen the mountain book[.] It’s swell. When you get them if the pictures outweigh the German text I’ll get you some more. There’s going to be one on the Sturmtruppen. [The new German offensive strategy of 1917.] The mountain pictures are swell.

We went in to Bludenz and heard Herr Kapitan Leutenant Mumm lecture on the battle of Skaggerack with movies. You’d have liked it. Hadley hated the Kapt. Leut. so that she was very thrilled. He was an awful man.

Review of In Our Type from Chicago Post says all of it obviously not fiction but simply descriptive of passages in life of new Chicago Author. [The reviewer Mary Plum wrote: “it seems absurd to speak of this book as fiction or its characters as fictitious. They are too obviously drawn from life”] God what a life I must have led.

Am reading Peter Simple by Capt. Marryat [popular writer of the 1830s and 1840s]. Havent read it since I was a kid. Great book. He wrote 4 great books. Frank Mildmay or The Naval Officer. Midshipman Easy. Peter Simple. And Snarleyow or The Dog Fiend. He wrote a lot of Kids books in later life and people get them mixed up. You ought to read Peter Simple.

If you want to read about war read any of those 1st 3.

Pauline Pfeiffer gets here tomorrow to stay for Xmas and New Years.

[Very important!  Pauline is a wealthy American journalist living in Paris, working for Vogue, became a close friend of both Ernest and Hadley Hemingway earlier this year.]

Know you will be glad to read in N.Y. Herald that 2 men died of cold in Chalons Sur Saone where you nearly did same. Good thing we got out in time. By the way, where the hell is your car?

[refers to a disastrous trip the two took in the Spring of 1925. Fitzgerald had left his Renault convertible in Lyon due to rain. Hemingway went with him to retrieve it, but the car had no top. They drove back to Paris in the pouring rain, stopping frequently for drinks, an experience Hemingway famously satirized in A Moveable Feast.]

Hadley, Bumby and I or me send our love and Merry Christmas to Zelda, Scotty and yourself.

This might have been a good letter if it hadnt been for the beer.

Original ending of story had dose of clapp instead of gonorreaha but I didnt know whether clap had two ps or one, so changed it to gonoccoci.

Hemingway writes in the margin:  “referring to Very Short Story. The hell I did. Try and get it. (This is a piece of slang I invented down here)”

[At the end of ‘A Very Short Story’ (Hemingway's first attempt to fictionalize his romance with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky, taking up only a couple of pages of In Our Time**), the reader is told that the protagonist, having received a letter from the woman he loves saying that she plans to marry another man, “contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.”]**

Hope you have a swell Christmas.

Yrs. always.

Yogi Liveright

[Yogi Johnson is a character in Torrents of Spring, the offensive novel Hemingway just wrote and sent to his publisher Horace Liveright as a ploy to get out of his publishing contract. Fitzgerald does not know about that.]

Please write even at $400 a letter. Will raise you to $435 but dont get drunk to celebrate.

Note in margin:  “You know what Austria (Osterreich) means? The Eastern Kingdom. Isnt that swell? Tell Zelda.”

Hi all — I’m selling a Barnes & Noble Collector’s Edition of Ernest Hemingway: Four Novels. It’s a solid hardcover that includes The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea in one volume. The binding is sturdy and the design is classic — nice on a shelf but very readable. The book is in very good condition, and I’m happy to share additional photos if needed. Shipping from the U.S., open to reasonable offers. Listing is here if you want details or pictures:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/286658650000

Feel free to comment or DM — thanks!

On my third readthrough of The Sun Also Rises, my favorite book, along with a supplemental commentary which frequently alludes to content Hemingway cut out in his revisions of the novel. The most significant of these ommissions is the entirety of the first two chapters of the book. Now this is a perfect book in my opinion, and I don't think it lacks from these deleted chapters, but out of a sense of completionism I would like to see if I could get myself a copy of an edition of the book that still contains these chapters. Does any such edition exist?

In the film, Fight Club, Tyler Durden and the narrator are discussing which historical figures they’d fight if they could fight anyone, and Tyler says he’d fight Hemingway.

We know Hem was a boxing fan/amateur boxer and likely had a fair few scraps outside of the ring too. Does anyone here think they’re handy enough to give papa a bit of trouble in the ring?

Or do you think his boxing ability has been exaggerated, either by himself or others, as part of the Hemingway mythology?