And Even Now.

BEERBOHM, Max. [Ernest Hemingway].

$15,000.00

Item Number: 141576

London: William Heinemann, 1921.

Second printing of Beerbohm’s critically praised book of essays, from the collection of Ernest Hemingway with his ownership signature, and later that of his first wife Hadley. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth and paper spine label. From the personal collection of young Ernest Hemingway with his ownership signature to the front free endpaper, “Ernest M. Hemingway” and his annotations in pencil on the opening chapter half-title and final page, bookseller ticket to the pastedown, “Fanny Butcher Books 75 East Adams Street Chicago.” Hemingway stopped signing with his middle initial early in his writing career, this, his personal copy of one of Beerbohm’s most highly praised works was heavily read by Hemingway and very influential on his early, economical writing style. Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, an affluent suburb just west of Chicago. He attended Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park from 1913 until 1917 and, after being rejected by the U.S. Army for poor eyesight following his graduation, responded to a Red Cross recruitment effort and signed on to be an ambulance driver in Italy. After being seriously wounded by mortar fire in Italy, Hemingway returned home and fell in love with his first wife, Hadley Richardson. They were married on September 3, 1921 and soon moved to Paris where Hemingway was hired as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. In Paris, Hemingway would write and publish his first collections of short stories, Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923) and In Our Time (1925), and first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), which epitomized the post-war expatriate generation and is recognized as his “greatest work” (Myers, 192). Hemingway divorced Hadley in 1927 to marry his second wife, Pauline. From the collection of Ernest Hemingway, and later Hadley Richardson. In very good condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box made by the Harcourt Bindery. Scarce and highly desirable.

Charming, witty, and elegant, English essayist and caricaturist Max Beerbohm was a brilliant critic and the master of a polished prose style. He won renown as “the consummate master of a finely individual talent… the one man with an unfailingly light, elegant, winsome touch. His best books are Seven Men [1919] and And Even Now” (New York Times). To his biographer, the 20 essays in this collection, published in December 1920, contain “the essential Max” (Hall, Max Beerbohm, 162). Beerbohm's style played a clear role in the shaping Hemingway's early writing style - selectivity, precision, uncompromising economy, and deep emotional clarification were all characteristics that the young writer would come to regard as dignified and worthy of reading.