"THE BOOK IS ALL ERNEST'S"

HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Islands in the Stream. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, (1970). Octavo, original green cloth, cartographic endpapers, original dust jacket. $550.

First edition of Hemingway's autobiographical novel in three parts, published posthumously. A fourth part had been removed by Hemingway in 1952 and issued separately as The Old Man and the Sea.

In the dedication, Mary Hemingway states of her work on the manuscript that "the book is all Ernest's. We have added nothing to it." Islands in the Stream is largely autobiographical, encompassing three stories to illustrate different stages in the life of its main character Thomas Hudson. Hemingway began work on the novel in 1946 and kept it in a bank vault in Hailey, Idaho during the last years of his life. A fourth part of the novel, originally titled "The Sea in Being," about a Cuban fisherman, was clearly inconsistent with Hudson's character, but the story intrigued Hemingway so much that he decided to publish it separately. This novella became The Old Man and the Sea (1952), which earned him international acclaim and was influential in his winning the Nobel Prize in 1954. Islands in the Stream spent 24 weeks on the New York Times Book Review bestseller list in the early 1970s, and was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film starring George C. Scott, Hart Bochner and Claire Bloom. Hanneman, Supplement 17a. Grissom A.42.1.a.

Very slight toning to book cloth at edges and extremities; dust jacket with small nick to upper back edge. A near-fine copy.