In spring 1939, Hemingway began work on his great novel of the Spanish Civil War. The story of an idealistic American sympathizer fighting with a Republican guerrilla group behind the enemy lines, it received generally very positive reviews, but earned Hemingway the enmity of American pro-communists for depicting Republican atrocities and Russian involvement in Spain.  Both directly, and through the impact of the film version with Gary Cooper (1944), For Whom the Bell Tolls had an extraordinary impact on the generation then facing a new World War. It was the first of Hemingway's novels to be selected for the Book-of-the-Month Club, and the most recent Hemingway biography reports that it has sold more copies than any other Hemingway title.

For Whom the Bells Tolls
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940. First edition, original cloth, without photographer's name under portrait of the author.

Inscribed "For Moe with gratitude and affection Ernie".

For Whom the Bells Tolls
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940. Publisher's salesman's dummy, original cloth, in red and white dust jacket ("Permanent jacket in preparation"). Title, epigraph, and pp. 1-6 of text only.

        

Updated July 16 2002 by the Department of Rare Books & Special Collections
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URL: http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/amlit/hemingway/hem7.html