Hemingway devoted most of the Thirties to travel and non-fiction accounts of his sporting activities. He was able to make the activities that interested him into literary material. Death in the Afternoon, his "Baedeker of the bullfight", was published in 1932. Green Hills of Africa (1935) was an attempt "to write an absolutely true book to see whether the shape of a country and the pattern of a month's action can, if truly presented compete with a work of the imagination." These books elicited the animosity of leftist critics during the Depression. Hemingway's connection with Esquire began in 1933; through 1936 he contributed 28 monthly articles, called "Letters," and stories.

Hemingway's third collection of stories, Winner Take Nothing, was published in 1933 between his two non-fiction books. It included "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," originally published in Esquire. His third novel, To Have and Have Not, which appeared in 1937, was his weakest to date, but it received respectful reviews on the basis of its alleged political message. Completion of the novel was rushed so that Hemingway could cover the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance in 1937, which syndicated 28 of his despatches.

"Bullfighting, Sport and Industry,"
 Fortune, 1:2, March, 1930, 83-88 and 139-146.

Death in the Afternoon.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932. Salesman's dummy copy, with Juan Gris frontispiece. Original black cloth, in illustrated dust-jacket. Page from Scribner's Fall catalogue inside front cover.

Death in the Afternoon.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932. First edition, original cloth, in dust-jacket. Inscribed "To Martha and Moe with much affection, Cooke, Montana, September 19, 1932."

"Green Hills of Africa,"
Scribner's Magazine, volume 97 (May-November, 1935). Serialization, original wrappers bound in.

This non-fiction account of Hemingway's 1933 Kenyan safari was serialized first in Scribner's Magazine before revision as a book. Sales were disappointing, but the Kenya experience provided the background for some of Hemingway's best short stories.

Green Hills of Africa.
New York, Scribner, 1935. First edition, with decorations by Edward Shenton, original green cloth, in dust-jacket.

Inscribed "To Martha and Moe Speiser with much affection. Ernest Hemingway."

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro. A Long Story,"
Esquire, The Magazine for Men, 6:3, August 1936, 27 and 194-201.

Beginning in 1933, Hemingway contributed both stories and non-fiction to the magazine Esquire. Shown here is the first periodical appearance of one of Hemingway's best-known stories, from the Kenyan experience. Fellow contributors to the same issue of Esquire were F. Scott Fitzgerald and John O'Hara.

Stories [Title to be Announced].
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933. Salesman's dummy copy for Winner Take Nothing, original black cloth with blank gold block front and back. Publisher's announcement pasted inside front cover.

"Who Murdered the Vets? A First-Hand Report on the Florida Hurricane,"
New Masses (September 17, 1935), 9-10.

To Have and Have Not.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937. First edition, original black cloth, in dust-jacket.

In the Depression era of the 1930s, and with the rise of Nazism in Germany, American writers were increasingly challenged to produce socially-committed work. Hemingway's bitter report on the death of some thousand war veterans in public-works camps on the Florida Keys during the 1935 hurricane was published in the socialist magazine New Masses. His next novel, To Have and Have Not, despite the title, is more about violence and betrayal than revolution, but Hemingway nonetheless was hailed by the American left as one of their own.

        

Updated July 16 2002 by the Department of Rare Books & Special Collections
Prepared for the web by Eva Moore.
Copyright © 2002, the University of South Carolina
URL: http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/amlit/hemingway/hem5.html