About this Item
HEMINGWAY, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926.
First edition, first printing, first issue. Hanneman A6a.
Octavo. Finely rebound in a striking full red and black morocco design binding, richly finished in gilt. The boards are decorated with a sweeping painted and onlaid design inspired by the muleta, the red cloth used by the matador in the final act of the bullfight: curved red forms travel dramatically across both covers against panels of deep black morocco, enclosed and accented with gilt tooling and decorative corner ornaments. The red morocco spine is divided by raised bands, with gilt floral devices and dark red morocco labels lettered in gilt; hand-sewn endbands and vivid red, black and gold Spanish marbled endpapers complete the presentation. With the bookplates of Susan Myrick and Aaron B. Berndt to a preliminary blank.
An important first issue of Hemingway's first major novel, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1926. This copy retains the principal first-issue points: the Scribner's seal to the copyright page, with no statement of later printing, and the celebrated misprint "stoppped" for "stopped" on page 181, line 26. Specialist bibliographical references record these as identifying features of the first issue.
The Sun Also Rises follows Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley and their circle of expatriates from Paris to the fiesta and bullfights of Pamplona. Drawing upon Hemingway's own experiences in France and Spain, the novel gave lasting expression to the post-war generation named in Gertrude Stein's epigraph as "a lost generation." Its economical prose and unsentimental treatment of desire, disillusionment, courage and loss established Hemingway as one of the defining writers of twentieth-century American literature.
The binding is exceptionally well conceived for the text. Bullfighting supplies the novel with its central ritual of beauty, danger, discipline and fate, most powerfully embodied in the young matador Pedro Romero. Here, the repeated sweep of red across the boards recalls the movement of the matador's muleta, while the opposing black panels and controlled gilt decoration lend the design a formal, theatrical intensity. The result is a bold visual interpretation of the Spanish world at the heart of Hemingway's novel.
The copy is further distinguished by the bookplate of Susan Dowdell Myrick (1893-1978), the American journalist and author best known as technical advisor on the film Gone with the Wind. A friend of Margaret Mitchell, Myrick was recommended by Mitchell to advise the production on Southern accents, dress and customs. A further bookplate records the ownership of Aaron B. Berndt.
The original 1926 text block is age-toned throughout, with occasional minor marking and small stains visible on preliminary leaves. The modern morocco design binding is highly attractive and presents with considerable impact, the red and black leather richly coloured, the gilt bright and the Spanish marbled endpapers especially effective. No dust jacket, the volume having been finely rebound.
A striking copy of the first edition, first printing, first issue of The Sun Also Rises, combining Hemingway's breakthrough novel with Susan Myrick provenance and an accomplished muleta-inspired design binding closely attuned to the drama and imagery of the work.
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