"WITH ALL GOOD WISHES, ALWAYS, FROM HER FRIEND, AND HER FRIEND'S FRIEND": HEMINGWAY'S THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, WARMLY INSCRIBED BY HIM

HEMINGWAY, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952. Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket supplied from a later edition, custom box. $18,500.

First edition, later printing of Hemingway's classic story of Santiago and his epic battle with the marlin and the sharks, inscribed by him, "To E— S— with all good wishes, always, from her friend, and her friend's friend Ernest Hemingway. La Habana 1953."

William Faulkner, who reviewed The Old Man and the Sea for the magazine Shenandoah, 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" (Baker, 593-94). "Here is the master technician once more at the top of his form, doing superbly what he can do better than anyone else"(New York Times). In this short novel Hemingway perfected the minimalist style that he had been honing and refining throughout his career. While working on it he wrote to Scribner, "This is the prose that I have been working for all my life that should read easily and simply and seem short and yet have all the dimensions of the visible world and the world of a man's spirit. It is as good prose as I can write as of now" (Letters, 738). Without Scribner's "A" beneath copyright notice. Later dust jacket supplied from another copy, with mention of the Nobel Prize. Hanneman A24a.

Cloth with mild discoloration, dust jacket with very shallow chipping and a few closed tears. Desirable inscribed.