HEMINGWAY, Ernest (1899-1961). A Farewell to Arms. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929.
8vo (222 x 146 mm). Full crushed blue morocco, covers twice ruled in gilt with gilt cornerpieces, upper cover reproducing the original design of the first trade edition dust jacket of this title by Cleon (1895-1979) in various color morocco onlays and gilt-work, flat spine lettered in white and blazing orange with a single vertical gilt filet and small gilt devices, edges gilt, hand-marbled endpapers, turn ins gilt, GILT STAMP-SIGNED BY SANGORSKI & SUTCLIFFE.
Provenance: originally from the library of Owen Wister Jr. (1860-1938). Wister was an American writer that was considered the “father” of western fiction, remembered for authoring the bestselling 1902 novel The Virginian. He became friends with Hemingway in the late 1920s and the two would correspond profusely after. Hemingway would seek professional advice from Wister including Scribner’s handling of omissions in the serialization of A Farewell to Arms. To which Wister responds: “Magazines have a special responsibility. They’re subscribed for. But nobody’s obliged to buy a book. So put it in the book and never mind the magazine” (27 February 1929). Hemingway would also speak very highly of the writer, including one letter to his editor at Charles Scribner’s, Maxwell Perkins, 12 February 1928, describing one of Wister’s stories as “wonderfully good” and a “lesson to our generation in how to write”. In another dated 1 March 1929, he wishes Wister were criticizing his new book, A Farewell to Arms, as he did in his earlier work, In Our Time: “You see I have great respect for your opinion because you can write the same story I would write and write it very much better”. When Wister visited Hemingway in 1929, and after reviewing the galleys of A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway writes to Perkins that Wister “agreed there was no change to be made in the last chapter and has read this ending and like it very much” his last words being “don’t touch a thing!”. In a following letter to Perkins, 31 October 1929, Hemingway requests that one of the presentation copies of A Farewell to Arms be sent to Owen Wister with his compliments (see selected letters, p. 312).
FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, ONE OF ONLY 10 PRESENTATION COPIES SIGNED BY HEMINGWAY, THIS TO THE AUTHOR OWEN WISTER, from a total edition of 510 copies; 500 of which were for sale. In a beautiful and unique designer binding executed by the famous London firm that was inspired after the original jacket illustration by the notable Greek-American artist, Cleo Theodora Damianakes. She was widely known for both her distinctive fusion of Art Deco and Hellenistic style and her dust jacket designs for the Lost Generation in the 1920s and 30s. Besides Farewell to Arms, she would also design Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rise (1926), as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s All the Sad Young Men (1926). Hanneman 8b.