Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
HEMINGWAY, Ernest (1899-1961). A Farewell to Arms. London: Jonathan Cape, 1929, 1929.
Price: US$577.24 + shipping
Description: [Modern litrature] FIRST UK EDITION. Crown octavo, pp.350. Elegantly hand-bound in half burgundy morocco, spine gilt-lettered in six compartments with raised bands, matching cloth sides, twin navy labels. A fine copy. Ernest Hemingway's celebrated novel about a young lieutenant and an English nurse who fall in love during The Great War was brought to the screen by David O. Selznick in 1957, starring Rock Hudson and Selznick's wife Jennifer Jones Selznick. The MGM epic would be his final film production. Hanneman [A35a]. Listed in Modern Library's Top 100 Novels [1998].
Seller: Adrian Harrington Ltd, PBFA, ABA, ILAB, Royal Tunbridge Wells, KENT, United Kingdom
Price: US$3500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Octavo, 355 pp., Nice clean book. Jacket is wrapped in a fresh Mylar protective sleeve. Jacket has edge tears & small edge chips. Small scuffs on paper spine label. First edition book with Scribner's seal on copyright page. Hanneman 8A. Original black cloth, gilt paper printed labels. First state jacket with $2.50 on front flap and misspelled " Katharine" in flap text. Some sunning on jacket. AA couple old tape repairs on jacket. Few spots of foxing on preliminary pages. This book is set during the Italian campaign of World War I. Published in 1929, it is a first-person account of American Frederic Henry, serving as a Lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. The title is taken from a poem by 16th-century English dramatist George Peele. The publication of A Farewell to Arms cemented Hemingway's stature as a modern American writer, became his first best- seller, and has been described as " the premier American war novel from that debacle World War I." This copy was owned by English author Dennis Wheatley whose prolific output of thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling writers from the 1930s through the 1960s. His Gregory Sallust series was one of the main inspirations for Ian Fleming's James Bond stories. Wheatley's bookplate is inside. His library was dispersed by Blackwells in 1979 and this book was in the catalog.
Seller: Sean Fagan, Rare Books, Buford, GA, U.S.A.
Hemingway, Ernest. A FAREWELL TO ARMS. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1929.
Price: US$3600.00 + shipping
Description: First edition, first printing of the acclaimed tragedy of ill-fated love amidst the fighting of World War I. Based in part on Hemingway's own experiences as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, this novel is a disillusioned indictment of war. Heavily influenced by the modernist approach to fiction developed by Gertrude Stein (especially in THREE LIVES), Hemingway's prose largely directed the critical judgments of style in the second half of the 20th century. "Hemingway's words strike you, each one, as if they were pebbles fetched fresh from a brook. They live and shine, each in its place. So one of his pages has the effect of a brook-bottom into which you look down through the flowing water" (Ford Madox Ford, intro to the Modern Library Edition, 1932). 7.25'' x 5''. Original full black cloth, gold metallic printed paper labels on front board and spine. Original unclipped ($2.50) blue pictorial dust jacket designed by Cleonike Damianakes Wilkins (front flap with misspelling, "Katherine Barclay"). Fore edge machine deckle. No legal disclaimer on [x]. [8], 355, [1] pages. Tiny bookseller ticket to gutter of rear pastedown. Light restoration to corners of dust jacket folds and spine extremities, faint darkening around folds and only very minor spotting. Hinges expertly repaired. Top edge somewhat dusty, a small spot of rubbing to each label. Presents beautifully. Very good plus in very good plus jacket.
Seller: Type Punch Matrix, Silver Spring, MD, U.S.A.