Hemingway, Ernest

Men Without Women. New York: Scribner's Sons, 1927

8vo. Publisher's black cloth with gold foil labels; cloth at spine head barely fraying, labels very lightly rubbed. Original dust-jacket without blurbs on front panel bands and with uncorrected text on front flap as called for; spine panel faded with loss at ends above top rule at head and below imprint at bottom, some separation along top spine fold, short closed tear to bottom of front panel but still more than presentable. In a quarter-morocco slipcase.

Hanneman A7a

A presentation copy of the first edition, to Hemingway's sometime Paris editor and publisher E.W. Titus: "To E. W. Titus / with all / good wishes / Ernest Hemingway / Paris 1927" on the half-title.

New Orleans-born Edward Titus was married to the very wealthy cosmetic entrepeneur Helena Rubinstein. She indulged his serious book collecting (his was a 700 lot sale at Parke-Bernet in 1951) and financed his other literary hobbies: a Paris bookstore called the Black Manikin Bookshop and the avant-garde publisher, Sign of the Black Manikin.  In 1930 he published the memoirs of notorious Kiki of Montparnasse for which Hemingway wrote an introduction. Titus also edited This Quarter, one of the few financially stable little magazines (thanks to Helena's fortune) and a venue for some of Hemingway's best stories.

Men Without Women is the second collection of Hemingway's short fiction and includes the classic stories "In Another Country," "Hills Like White Elephants" and "The Killers." 

Presentation copies of this key title are surprisingly uncommon, with only five examples sold at auction since 1977 as recorded in ABPC.  None  were inscribed to anyone so directly related to Hemingway's Parisian literary life as the present copy.  An important Paris association copy of one of Hemingway's best works and signed in the year of publication.