“THAT MUSICAL CRYSTAL-CLEAR STYLE, BLOWN LIKE GLASS FROM THE WHITE-HEAT OF VIOLENCE”: SIGNED LIMITED EDITION OF HEMINGWAY’S A FAREWELL TO ARMS, THE ONLY ONE OF HIS WORKS SO ISSUED, IN SCARCE ORIGINAL SLIPCASE, A BEAUTIFUL COPY
HEMINGWAY, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929. Tall octavo, original white parchment spine and corners, green paper boards, original patterned slipcase with paper label numbered in manuscript. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
Signed limited first edition of Hemingway’s “consummate masterpiece,” number 326 of only 510 copies signed by him, in scarce original slipcase.
“Probably [Hemingway’s] best… Its success was so enormous… After it one could no more imitate that musical crystal-clear style; blown like glass from the white-heat of violence… the beginning, like all his beginnings, seems effortless and magical” (Connally 60). “A Farewell to Arms was the novel that placed Hemingway, early, among the American masters… [it is], in fact, the most satisfying and most sustained, the consummate masterpiece, among Hemingway’s novels. It bears the mark of Hemingway’s best gifts as a writer” (Mellow, 377-79). The only signed limited first edition of any of Hemingway’s works. Hanneman A8b.
An almost perfect copy with only very slight soiling to vellum spine ends; slipcase expertly restored.