The Sun Also Rises: A Norton Critical Edition

“Finally, the first of Norton’s long-awaited treatments of Ernest Hemingway, the American who, more than anyone, changed the look and sound of modern American prose. Academic rigor and impeccable attention to detail are the hallmarks of the Norton Critical Edition, and this volume on The Sun Also Rises is no exception. In addition to the usual suspects of contemporary reviews and early criticism, this volume draws on an exceptional pool of resources and ancillary material to tell this novel’s story: biographical excerpts from the likes of Sylvia Beach and Harold Loeb, original expurgated text, epistolary exchanges with Max Perkins and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and hefty segments on expatriation, the bullfights, and Hemingway’s own literary influences. Add to this a generous sampling of new, exceptional criticism that speaks to a modern audience about issues of gender and sexuality and about race, and a wonderful, spirited introduction, and this critical edition edited by Michael Thurston becomes the definitive edition of Hemingway’s star-making novel and a necessary comprehensive guide for both teachers and students.”

―Marc Dudley, North Carolina State University

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

The text of Ernest Hemingway's best-known novel.

Introduction and explanatory footnotes by Michael Thurston.

A rich selection of background and contextual materials carefully chosen to enhance the reader’s understanding of and appreciation for Hemingway’s prose style and his famous 1926 novel. Topics include “Biographical and Autobiographical Background,” “Composition and Revision,” “Letters,” “On Postwar Paris and Expatriates,” “On Bullfighting,” and “Literary Influences.”

Six major early reviews and ten recent critical essays.

A chronology of Ernest Hemingway's life and work and a selected bibliography.

About the Series

Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format―annotated text, contexts, and criticism―helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

“This edition of The Sun Also Rises is to be celebrated. Michael Thurston has assembled materials so today’s readers will appreciate the drama of the novel’s composition, its reception and critical legacy, and its historical context making Hemingway’s genius feel fresh and vital.”--Mark Cirino, University of Evansville

ERNEST HEMINGWAY was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star for six months before volunteering in 1918 for the American Red Cross ambulance service in Italy during World War I. Wounded by an Austrian trench mortar, he spent months in the hospital in Milan recovering from his injuries. After a brief return to the United States, he moved to Paris in December 1921 and quickly made a name for himself in expatriate literary circles there. His first major novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), established him as a mainstream writer and was followed by the bestselling A Farewell to Arms (1929). Married four times and the father of three children, he was a celebrity known for his masculine ethos and interest in blood sports such as hunting, boxing, and bullfighting. He made frequent deep sea fishing excursions aboard his cabin cruiser Pilar from his home in Key West, Florida, where he had settled in 1928. He later made his home in Cuba in the village of San Francisco de Paula, outside Havana. He worked as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, and his novel For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940) solidified his reputation as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His novella The Old Man and the Sea (1952) won the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Unable to remain in post-revolutionary Cuba, Hemingway spent his final years in Ketchum, Idaho. Following unsuccessful treatment at the Mayo Clinic for physical and mental health problems, he died from suicide at his home in Ketchum in 1961.

Michael Thurston is the Helen Means Professor of English at Smith College. His previous books include?Making Something Happen: American Political Poetry between the World Wars,?The Underworld Descent in Twentieth-Century Poetry, and?Reading Postwar British and Irish Poetry?(with Nigel Alderman). He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and currently serves as Provost and Dean of the Faculty.?