AN EXTRAORDINARY HEMINGWAY RARITY: THE FIRST EDITION OF IN OUR TIME, ONE OF ONLY 170 COPIES PRINTED

HEMINGWAY, Ernest. in our time. Paris: Three Mountains Press, for sale at Shakespeare and Company, 1924. Quarto, original printed tan boards with black lettering and publisher's device printed over a collage of red-lettered facsimile newspaper items neatly respined, uncut. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. $45,000.

First edition of this beautiful production, number 105 of only 170 copies printed, with woodcut frontispiece of Hemingway from a portrait by Henry Strater.

Hemingway's second published book, in our time is certainly one of his rarest both because of the limited number of copies printed and its fragile nature. A series of short vignettes, the work is a powerful statement on war and includes chapters written during Hemingway's recent visits to Spain and the fictional account of the death of Maera, a renowned matador. In his review, Edmund Wilson called it "a harrowing record of the barbarities of the period in which we live." Ezra Pound edited in our time, and it was later expanded into the American edition of 1925 in which these 18 chapters appeared interspersed among other classic Hemingway short stories. Hemingway intended in our time to be his first book, but publication was delayed, allowing Robert McAlmon of Contact to publish Three Stories and Ten Poems first, in an edition of 300 copies. Hanneman A2.

Binder’s adhesive offsetting to endpapers, as usual; very slight rubbing to corners. A very good copy of one of the rarest of Hemingway titles.