My Brother, Ernest Hemingway.

HEMINGWAY, Leicester [Ernest Hemingway].

Item Number: 147691

Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1962.

First edition of this intimate work on Ernest Hemingway by his brother. Octavo, original cloth, frontispiece, illustrated. Association copy, inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the front free endpaper, “February 21, 1962, This book is for George Brown, who was the kind of friend Papa needed more of, and who helped make this book possible. With profound thanks, Lex Hemingway.” The recipient, George Brown was Hemingway’s close friend and boxing trainer. Hemingway first met Brown, the owner of a gym in midtown New York, in the 1930s. The author often visited Brown when he was in the city and hosted him at his homes in Cuba and Idaho. In 1955, Hemingway invited Brown to La Vigia to be his physical trainer for the strenuous fishing sequences in the film adaptation of The Old Man and the Sea. Brown gave him postoperative rubdowns and delighted him with his unfailing solicitude. ‘Did they hurt you, Ernie?’ George would say. ‘How’s the back? Lie down like you were going to sleep. Make him a drink, René. What kind of liquor going to hurt you, boy? Hold it up to his mouth, René. Drink it slow, Ernie. Just relax good, and let me get the legs loosened up.’ Ernest reveled in such treatment (Baker, p. 531). Following Hemingway’s death in 1962, George was one of the pallbearers at his funeral. Brown is thanked in the acknowledgements on page 7. Grissom A24; Hanneman 24a. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Photograph of Hemingway on the front panel by Yousef Karsh.

My Brother, Ernest Hemingway was the only biography Ernest knew about, and he was pleased with it—although he asked his brother to postpone publication while he was still alive. First published in 1962, Leicester's biography provides a revealing and intimate portrait of one of the great writers of our century. Ernest Hemingway was a legend in his own time, whose life was as dramatic as any of the characters in his novels and short stories. He won both the Nobel and the Pulitzer prizes for literature, and the literary style he created has been imitated but never matched. Leicester was the archetypal kid brother, 16 years younger than the great man, whom he adored and in whose footsteps he followed, becoming a respected writer, sharing his brother's love for high risk and adventure, and, when his health failed, choosing to end his own life as Ernest had done. In this poignant biography, Leicester has given us insight into his world-renowned brother's life and career as no one else could. His reminiscences allow us to better understand what prompted so many of the familiar Hemingway responses, and the experiences from which he derived material for his novels and stories.