"'IL NUOVO CAPOLAVORO' WITH PICTURES OF NO GREAT VALUE… ERNEST HEMINGWAY": RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY, HEMINGWAY'S OWN COPY OF THE FIRST ITALIAN EDITION OF HEMINGWAY'S OLD MAN AND THE SEA, INSCRIBED BY HIM TO HIS FRIEND, SCHOLAR FRASER DREW

HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Il vecchio e il mare [The Old Man and the Sea]. (Milan, Italy): Arnold Mondadori, 1952. Small octavo (4-3/4 by 7-3/4 inches), original blue-green paper boards, original dust jacket, original belly band.

First Italian edition, Hemingway's own copy of his Old Man and the Sea (Il vecchio e il mare), a rare presentation/association copy published the same year as the American first edition, inscribed to his good friend with a reference to this edition's illustrations, "For Frazer [sic] Drew, 'Il nuovo capalarioro' [the new masterpiece] with pictures of no great value, Ernest Hemingway," featuring nine full-page color and black-and-white illustrations, in original dust jacket with original belly band.

Hemingway inscribed this first Italian edition to his friend, Professor Fraser Drew. As a young teacher Drew wrote a letter to which Hemingway responded with uncharacteristic kindness, signing a number of Drew's books. Hemingway then invited Drew to visit and on April 8, 1955, one year after Hemingway won the Nobel Prize, they spent a long afternoon discussing literature, later recounted by Drew in his article "Unedited Notes on a Visit to Finca Vigia" (in Bruccoli, Conversations With Ernest Hemingway, 89-98). At the end of Drew's visit Hemingway said, "Let's go up to the house and sign those books of yours." He inscribed all the books Drew had brought with him and presented him with many others from his own collection, including foreign translations; this volume is undoubtedly from that visit. Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, first published in 1952, won him the Pulitzer Prize and fundamentally contributed to his award of the 1954 Nobel Prize of Literature. Faulkner 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" (in Baker, 593-94). While working on it he wrote: "This is the prose that I have been working for all my life… It is as good prose as I can write as of now" (Letters, 738). With very scarce original belly band; containing nine full-page color and black-and-white illustrations by Ugo Narantonio. Translated by Fernanda Pivano. Four leaves of publisher's advertisements at rear. Hanneman D-170; see 24-A. From the library of Fraser Drew with his bookplate on the same page as Hemingway's inscription.

Interior fine, mild toning to cloth edges; light chipping, faint toning to spine of dust jacket; small loss to belly band not affecting printing. A highly desirable near-fine presentation copy with a distinctive association.