In Our Time: Authoritative Text; Contexts; Criticism

“This concise yet comprehensive edition of Hemingway’s first major work, In Our Time (1925), offers an accessible introduction, an authoritative text, and a valuable selection of contextualizing materials. In a single volume, it brings together a relevant sample of Hemingway’s early journalism, correspondence, initial reviews of the book, and an indispensable selection of recent criticism.” ―Zena Meadowsong, Rowan University

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

Hemingway’s first major work (1925) along with two episodes that he discarded from In Our Time, “Three Shots” and “On Writing.”

J. Gerald Kennedy’s insightful introduction, note on the text, and detailed explanatory footnotes.

A rich selection of contextual materials essential for fully appreciating this remarkable short-story collection, including generous samples of Hemingway’s related journalism and correspondence and eight major early reviews.

Twenty-two critical essays, helpfully organized by complete collection, comparison of In Our Time to in our time (its precursor), and individual stories.
A chronology 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.

“J. Gerald Kennedy brings together a long overdue authoritative text of In Our Time with crucial early reviews, the most useful current criticism, and materials from Hemingway’s manuscripts, journalism, and correspondence that are essential for appreciating this masterpiece.” ―Carl Eby, Appalachian State University

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.

J. Gerald Kennedy is Boyd Professor of English at Louisiana State University.?He is the author of?Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity?and coeditor (with Jackson R.?Bryer) of?French Connections: Hemingway and Fitzgerald Abroad.?He was advisory editor of?volumes 1–3?of the?Letters of Ernest Hemingway,?under the general editorship of Sandra?Spanier, and he is coediting a forthcoming volume of?Hemingway?letters,?the final years.?He?is also the author of a number of essays on Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and expatriate Paris, and he?edited?Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities.?His publications on nineteenth-century American literature?include?Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing?and (with fellowship support from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the NEH) a wide-ranging cultural history,?Strange Nation: Literary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict in the Age of Poe.??