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First edition, early printing of Hemingway's third novel, a tragic exploration of love, duty, and the futility of war. Octavo, original publisher's cloth. Association copy, lengthily inscribed by Ernest Hemingway to his cousin on the front free endpaper, "For Ruth and Malcom, from their child producing house guest who is very fond of them (what a lousy dedication when there is so much to say) Ernest Hemingway." The recipients, Ruth White Lowry (1884â "1974) and her husband William Malcolm Lowry (1884â "1953), were longtime residents of Kansas City, Missouri, and integral members of Ernest Hemingwayâ s extended Midwestern family. Ruth, the daughter of William White and Mary Hall White, was a first cousin of Grace Hall Hemingway, the authorâ s mother. This made her Ernestâ s first cousin once removed, though their families were close enough that Hemingway referred to her simply as â Cousin Ruth.â The White and Hall families had deep Midwestern rootsâ "Ruth was educated in Kansas City and was part of the cityâ s civic and cultural life throughout the early twentieth century. When Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, returned from Paris to the United States in 1928, they came to Kansas City for the birth of their first child, Patrick Hemingway, who was delivered at St. Maryâ s Hospital on June 28 of that year. The Hemingways stayed with Ruth and Malcolm Lowry at their Kansas City home both before and after the delivery. Pauline returned to the same house three years later, in November 1931, for the birth of their second son, Gregory Hancock Hemingway, while Ernest shuttled between Kansas City and Key West during the final stages of Death in the Afternoon. The Lowrysâ hospitality offered Hemingway a familial refuge far from the expatriate world of Europe and the growing celebrity that attended his literary success. The relationship between the two families endured for decades. Letters and family recollections describe Ruth as a warm, maternal presence in Hemingwayâ s lifeâ "a relative he could trust with his young family during periods of upheaval. The Lowry household thus occupies a unique place in Hemingwayâ s biography: it was the setting for the births of both of his sons with Pauline, and the site of rare domestic calm amid his restless movements between continents. Copies inscribed to members of the Lowry family remain among the most significant Hemingway association copies, linking the authorâ s private life in the American Midwest to his public identity as one of the central figures of twentieth-century literature. Ernest Hemingwayâ s For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) represents one of the authorâ s most complex meditations on war, love, and moral responsibility. Set during the Spanish Civil War, the novel follows Robert Jordan, an American volunteer in the International Brigades, as he undertakes a mission to destroy a fascist-held bridge. Drawing on Hemingwayâ s own experiences as a journalist in Spain, the novel fuses political engagement with psychological depth, exploring the tension between individual conviction and collective duty. Stylistically, it embodies Hemingwayâ s characteristic economy of languageâ "his â iceberg theoryâ â "while broadening his earlier focus on personal heroism to encompass a larger ethical inquiry into the nature of sacrifice and solidarity. The novelâ s title, drawn from John Donneâ s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, underscores its universalist theme: the interconnectedness of human suffering and mortality. Through its spare prose, shifting perspectives, and symbolic use of death and time, For Whom the Bell Tolls transforms the brutality of civil conflict into a profound reflection on the cost of idealism and the enduring value of human compassion amid catastrophe.
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