Old Man and the Sea

Ernest HEMINGWAY

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Old Man and the Sea

“MAN IS NOT MADE FOR DEFEAT”: FIRST EDITION OF HEMINGWAY’S THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

HEMINGWAY, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952. Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of Hemingway’s masterful tale of “a fishing adventure… as close to tragedy as fishing may be” (New York Times), in original dust jacket.

William Faulkner, who reviewed The Old Man and the Sea for the magazine Shenandoah, called the novel Hemingway's best: "Time may show it to be the best single piece of any of us. I mean his and my contemporaries" (Baker, 593-94). "Here is the master technician once more at the top of his form, doing superbly what he can do better than anyone else"(New York Times). In this short novel Hemingway perfected the minimalist style that he had been honing and refining throughout his career. While working on it he wrote to Scribner, "This is the prose that I have been working for all my life that should read easily and simply and seem short and yet have all the dimensions of the visible world and the world of a man's spirit. It is as good prose as I can write as of now" (Letters, 738). The story of Santiago and his epic battle with the marlin and the sharks won Hemingway the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and was instrumental in his being awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. With Scribner "A" beneath copyright notice. First edition dust jacket, with no mention of the Nobel Prize. Hanneman A24a.

Book with slight rubbing to spine ends, price-clipped dust jacket bright and lovely. A beautiful copy.

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