Books

New York:: Scribner's,, 1937.. First Printing of the First US Edition. A Fine tight copy in a Near Fine unclipped dust jacket with just a hint of wear to the head of the spine. To Have and Have Not was Hemingway's second novel set in the United States, after The Torrents of Spring. Written sporadically between 1935 and 1937, and revised as he traveled back and forth from Spain during the Spanish Civil War, To Have and Have Not portrays Key West and Cuba in the 1930s, and provides a social commentary on that time and place. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers describes the novel as heavily influenced by the Marxist ideology Hemingway was exposed to by his support of the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War while he was writing it. The novel had its origins in two short stories published earlier in periodicals by Hemingway ("One Trip Across" and "The Tradesman's Return") which make up the opening chapters, and a novella, written later, which makes up about two-thirds of the…

To Have and Have Not is the dramatic story of Harry Morgan, an honest man who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who throng the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair. Hemingway's most intriguing and tantalizing themes make their appearance: man's battle against the cruelty of nature, the pressures of society on the individual, and the existential qualities of life in the modern world.

One method to determine a first edition of 'To Have and Have Not' is by identifying the 'A' present on the copyright page, indicating a first printing, and absence of mention of later printings.