Hemingway edited Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time in 1942; but he did not go to the war in Europe until 1944 as a correspondent for Collier's, for which he wrote six articles. His fifth novel, Across the River and Into the Trees which treated the war indirectly had a disappointing reception in 1950. The 1952 novelette, The Old Man and the Sea, recouped his fame, bringing Hemingway the tardy Nobel Prize in 1954. Ernest Hemingway did not publish another book before his suicide in 1961. His work-in-progress has yielded five posthumously published volumes.

Men at War. The Best War Stories of All Time.
Edited with an introduction by Ernest Hemingway, based on a plan by William Kozlenko.

This book, an anthology of war stories arranged under headings from the great war theorist von Clausewitz, with an introduction by Hemingway, was first published in 1942, following Pearl Harbor.

"Across the River and Into the Trees",
Cosmopolitan (February-June, 1950). Serialization, original wrappers.

Across the River and Into the Trees
London: Jonathan Cape, 1950. Advance proof copy, pictorial wrappers.

Hemingway's first novel in a decade, this book is set in post-War Venice, and centered on an embittered middle-aged (dying) military hero and his love for an eighteen-year-old Italian countess. It was serialized in Cosmopolitan and sold a then-respectable 93,000 copies, but was a critical failure.  The English edition preceded the U.S. edition by three days.

Across the River and Into the Trees
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950. First American edition, original cloth, in dust jacket.

"The Old Man and the Sea",
Life, 33:9 (September 1, 1952). Original wrappers. Complete text of Hemingway's novel in one issue of the magazine.

For what would prove to be his last completed work, Hemingway again focused on an aging hero, this time a Cuban fisherman who had gone 84 days without catching a single fish, takes the risk of sailing far beyond his normal range, and faces a life and death struggle with a giant marlin. It was a smash hit. Life paid $40,000 for magazine rights, and printed more than 5 million copies of this special issue. Scribner's and Book-of-the-Month Club between them sold 280,000.

The Old Man and the Sea
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952. First edition, original cloth, in dust jacket.

In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The following year, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Old Man and the Sea
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952. Book-of-the-Month Club Selection, original cloth.

Two copies shown with variant cloth texture and variant ink color for jacket photograph.

        

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/hem8.html