Hemingway, Ernest

A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner's, 1929.

8vo (7 1/4 x 5 1/8 ins; 186 x 188 mm). Publisher's black cloth with printed gold labels to spine and front cover; labels rubbed, cloth worn along bottom board edges, tips of lower right corners of a few leaves withold burn . Pictorial dust-jacket designed by Cleonike (first issue with "Katherine" spelling on flap); rubbed and faded with loss at spine ends and top margin of rear panel.



 

Hanneman A10a; Connolly 60.

First edition, first issue inscribed to close friend Guy Hickok "trusting him to fill in the blanks."  Hemingway first met Brooklyn Eagle correspondent Guy Hickok in 1922 and the two became fast friends for more than a decade, bonding over shared enthusiasms for good meals, sport and general carousing.  Hemingway gave Hickok a copy of the manuscript of the novel, one that certainly had the expletives that the publsher replaced with dashes intact. "To Gros Hickok / with much affection / trusting him to fill in the blanks ----- / Ernest Hemingway"

While Hemingway did not replace the profanities for Guy as he did in the copy he presented to Joyce, the present lot remains a remarkably close association copy of a key novel. (Hickok would remark to Hemingway on the similarities between the book's Catherine and the author's wife Pauline after reading the manuscript). An inscription addressing the book's censorship is uncommon among presentation copies even to other Paris intimates.