Hemingway, Ernest | In Our Time, Hemingway's treasured second book

Hemingway, Ernest

In Our Time. New York, Boni & Liveright, 1925

8vo. Publisher's black cloth gilt. Dust jacket; chipped at corners and head and foot of spine, restoration to spine fold of upper panel.

First edition of the work that brought Hemingway fame.

In Our Time is the collection of short stories and vignettes that marked Ernest Hemingway’s American debut and established his literary reputation. Upon its publication, the collection was lauded by prominent contemporaries, including Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions. This acclaim placed Hemingway alongside Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein as one of the most promising American writers of the period.

The collection includes several early Hemingway classics, such as the famous Nick Adams stories: Indian Camp, The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife, The Three-Day Blow, and The Battler. It introduces readers to the hallmarks of the Hemingway style: a lean, tough prose, enlivened by an ear for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic that suggests, through the simplest of statements, a sense of moral value and a clarity of heart. 

Alcohol and drinking are recurring motifs throughout the collection, often serving as symbols of camaraderie, escape, or self-destruction. In The Three-Day Blow, Nick Adams and his friend Bill drink copious amounts of whiskey as they discuss relationships, masculinity, and independence. In The Battler, alcohol underscores the instability of Ad Francis, a former boxer whose erratic behavior hints at a troubled past.

Now recognized as one of the most original short story collections in twentieth-century literature, In Our Time serves as a foundational text for understanding Hemingway’s later works. The collection was banned in Germany from 1933 to 1945 under the National Socialist regime.

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