Description

Franklin Library leather edition of Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," Illustrated by Herbert Tauss, a Limited edition, one of the 100 GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME series, published in 1975. Bound in burgundy leather with a rose in the center of the front and back board, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, the book has scarlet red silk end leaves, satin book marker, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition. Ernest Hemingway, who lived from 1899-1961, grew up in Oak Forest, Illinois, the son of a medical doctor and a musical---but domineering mother. Hemingway like to live larger than life. He drank like a fish; he raced horses, raced bicycles, and played tennis like a bruiser. He ran with the bulls and drank some more with the matadors. When he was on safari he boxed with locals and when he was in training in Paris he boxed with Joan Miro in the Parisian gym they both patronized. Hemingway purchased Miro's painting "After the Farm" for Hadley's birthday but when they divorced she allowed him to borrow the painting which he hung over his bed in Havana. "A Farewell to Arms" is dedicated to GUS PFEIFFER, the Uncle of his ARKANSAS wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, and the man who financed his first African safari and bought the Key West house. Originally published in 1929, the novel is the story of FREDERICK HENRY, an American lieutenant in the ITALIAN ambulance service during WORLD WAR I. Henry falls in love with an English nurse, CATHERINE BARKLEY, and when she becomes pregnant, she refuses to marry him because she would be returned to England. Lieutenant Henry deserts the Italian army, and with the help of a Milan barman who loans Frederick a boat, he and Catherine row all night from Italy to Switzerland. Frederick and Catherine spend a pleasant winter in Montreux, Switzerland, awaiting the birth of the child. The novel ends with Frederick leaving the hospital and walking to the hotel in the rain. Hemingway once said: "When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you. . .Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you." And the infamous lines in A FAREWELL TO ARMS: "If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." 314 pages. I offer Combined shipping.