Books

First edition, first printing, of the "first full-length book Hemingway has ever written about his own country and his own people... It is Key West, apparently, that remains America in cross-section to him: the noisy, shabby, deeply moving rancor and tumult of all those human wrecks" (Kazin). Following publication, it stood fourth on the national bestseller list. This tale of a smuggler running contraband between Cuba and Florida was written during Hemingway's breaks from fighting in the Spanish Civil War. It was initially conceived as two separate stories: Part I first appeared as "One Trip Across", Cosmopolitan, April 1934, Part II as "The Tradesman's Return", Esquire, February 1936. The novel served the basis for the 1944 film with screenplay by William Faulkner. Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt on green ground, front cover stamped in gilt with facsimile of author's signature. With dust jacket. Nick to spine head, wear to lower corners, mild offsetting to endpapers, else clean. A very good copy indeed in like dust jacket, unclipped, top edge creased and nicked, extremities rubbed, damp stain on verso, bright overall. Grissom A.14.1.a; Hanneman A14a. Alfred Kazin, New York Herald Tribune, 17 Oct. 1937.

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.