The Old Man and the Sea.

HEMINGWAY, Ernest.

Item Number: 139003

New York: Charles Scribner's & Sons, 1952.

First edition of Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and one of his most famous works. Octavo, original blue cloth. With an autograph note signed and entirely in the hand of Ernest Hemingway laid in which reads, “To Lynn and June Walzer with much affection Ernest Hemingway March 9 1957.” One of the recipients has included a note of provenance on the enclosing envelope which reads, “Hemingway’s autograph – Met him at Nationale Hotel in Havana, Cuba – March 10th – 1957 – Jack Dempsey too!” In 1940, Hemingway and his third wife Martha Gellhorn purchased Finca Vigía, a 15-acre property 15 miles from Havana where Hemingway would write much of For Whom the Bell Tolls, and later, his Pulitzer Prize-winning work, The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway became a fixture of Havana and was known to frequent many of the local hotel bars including that of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba which hosted a number of important guests, including artists, actors, athletes and writers such as Winston Churchill, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Jimmy Carter, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Mickey Mantle, Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Keaton, Jorge Negrete, Agustín Lara, Rocky Marciano, Tyrone Power, Rómulo Gallegos, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, and Marlon Brando. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Photograph of Hemingway by Lee Samuels.

Upon its publication in 1952 by Charles Scribner's Sons, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954. The novel reinvigorated Hemingway's literary reputation. It initiated a reexamination of his entire body of work. The novel was received with such alacrity, that it restored many readers' confidence in Hemingway's capability as an author. Indeed, the publisher even wrote on an early dust jacket, calling the novel a "new classic," and it was compared by many critics to such revered works as William Faulkner's "The Bear" and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.