“WE MUST HAVE BEEN TOUGH THEN”: FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF HEMINGWAY’S ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES
HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Across the River and Into the Trees. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950. Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket.
First American edition of Hemingway’s first novel since For Whom the Bell Tolls.
A decade after For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway published his next novel, Across the River and Into the Trees. He took its title from the last words of Stonewall Jackson as he lay mortally wounded and delirious in the Chancellorsville campaign: "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." The affair of the hero, Colonel Richard Cantwell, with Renata clearly owes its inspiration to Hemingway's own infatuation with a young Italian girl, Adriana Ivancich. First edition, first printing, with Scribner's "A" on copyright page. In first-issue dust jacket, with yellow lettering on spine rather than orange. The English edition preceded the preferred American edition by three days. Hanneman 23A.
Book fine; light edge-wear. tiny bit of faint dampstaining to verso of near-fine dust jacket.