A GREAT RARITY AND ONE OF THE FINEST OF ALL HEMINGWAY ASSOCIATION COPIES: FIRST EDITION OF HEMINGWAY’S FIRST BOOK PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES, IN OUR TIME, THIS COPY WARMLY INSCRIBED BY HEMINGWAY IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION TO ONE OF HIS CLOSEST FRIENDS, ERIC EDWARD DORMAN-SMITH, THE DEDICATEE OF IN OUR TIME AND THE GODFATHER OF HEMINGWAY’S SON BUMBY

HEMINGWAY, Ernest. In Our Time. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925. Octavo, original black cloth. Housed in custom cloth chemise and slipcase.

First edition, a superb association copy, of the first of Hemingway’s books published in the United States, one of only 1335 copies. This copy warmly inscribed by Hemingway to Eric Edward “Chink” Dorman-Smith, Hemingway’s hero and first and closest adult friend and the dedicatee of in our time, the earlier collection of short stories that formed the nucleus of In Our Time : “To Chink with Hommages Respectueux from his former A.D.C. [aide-de-camp] and still, with the occasional permission of His Brittanic Majesty, companion—Popplethwaite, Paris, October 1925.”

Dorman-Smith first met Hemingway (whom he called “Shamus O’Popplethwaite”) in Milan in November 1918, where the nineteen-year-old aspiring author was recuperating from jaundice contracted as a consequence of wounds he suffered attempting to save a wounded Italian soldier. Though only a few years Hemingway’s senior, Dorman-Smith had been fighting since 1914 with the Northumberland Fusiliers, and he gave Hemingway some of his earliest insight into the nature of war and a soldier’s understanding of death. Hemingway would regularly refer to Dorman-Smith and the adventures they shared in his journalism, poetry, stories and non-fiction from 1923 until the end of his life. Dorman-Smith’s career is portrayed in Across the River and Into the Trees, about which he remarked to Hemingway: “How did you know things that are known only to retired army officers?” Hemingway also wrote about him in Moveable Feast, and used two of his friend’s war anecdotes in in our time, which was dedicated to him. Sharing a love of literature and sport, the two would remain friends for life, taking any opportunity to get together for bouts of drinking, skiing, fishing, hiking, and bull-running; Dorman-Smith was godfather to Hemingway’s son, Bumby.

This superb collection of stories presented a number of Hemingway’s finest short pieces to the American public, including “Indian Camp,” “The Battler,” “The Three Day Blow,” and both parts of “Big Two-Hearted River.” In 1924 the Three Mountains Press in Paris published the similarly titled in our time in an edition of only 170 copies; that much-shorter work contained only the vignettes that are here called “Chapters” and interspersed among the 15 longer stories collected here for the first time. (Two of the 18 pieces that originally appeared in in our time were given titles and included here as full stories: “A Very Short Story” and “The Revolutionist.”) Without very scarce original dust jacket. Hanneman A3a.

Light fading to spine. Extremely good condition. One of the rarest of Hemingway’s works, with an extraordinary inscription and one of the most exceptional Hemingway associations.