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First edition, first printing, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: "To Edward W. Titus, as a souvenir of a very sporting act performed by the said E. W. Titus in the city of Paris. September 17 - 1931 - from his friend, Ernest Hemingway." An important figure in expatriate Paris, Titus (1870-1952) owned the Montparnasse bookshop At the Sign of the Black Manikin, which operated from 1924 to 1932. His Black Manikin Press published novels by Djuna Barnes and Mary Butts, the first trade edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover, and English translations of Baudelaire's poems and Kiki's memoirs. The latter was issued with an introduction by Hemingway, in which he declares the publication to mark the end of the "the era of Montparnasse". Between 1930 and 1931, Hemingway wrote three letters to Titus, each referencing his introduction. In the first two, Hemingway is keen to secure copyright for the introduction, which Titus ensured by publishing a small pamphlet edition in New York, and in the third, some months later, he consoles Titus on what turned out to be an unprofitable venture: "I'm sorry you lost money on your Kiki... We've all lost money in 1929-30 - and may lose more in 31 - But hang onto a pamphlet or two and you'll get some of it back" (unpublished; sold at Christie's NY, 14 June 2006, lot 296). Titus's decision to publish is probably the "very sporting act" which Hemingway refers to in his inscription. Written in only ten days, The Torrents of Spring was turned down by Horace Liveright, who claimed that it was unpublishable because "it is such a bitter, and I might say almost vicious caricature" of Sherwood Anderson and his novel Dark Laughter (1925). "We are rejecting Torrents of Spring because we disagree with you and Scott Fitzgerald and Louis Bromfield and Dos Passos, that it is a fine and humorous American satire" (Gilmer 124). This rejection prompted Hemingway to break his contract with Boni and Liveright and offer the manuscript to Max Perkins at Scribner's, which would remain his publisher for the rest of his life. READ MORE Octavo. Original black cloth, spine and front cover lettered in red, fore and bottom edges untrimmed. With dust jacket. Spine ends bumped, tiny hole to upper margin of title, contents just slightly toned; jacket lightly rubbed and toned, especially on spine, small chips to extremities, unclipped: a near-fine copy in very good jacket. Grissom A.4.1.a; Hanneman A4a.

The Torrents of Spring is a novel by Ernest Hemingway written in 1925 about a young man's disillusionment with love. It satirizes the over-romanticized literature of the time and is a parody of Sherwood Anderson's 'Dark Laughter'.