The Old Man and the Sea.

"But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated": First Edition of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea; Inscribed by Him

The Old Man and the Sea.

HEMINGWAY, Ernest.

Item Number: 116295

New York: Charles Scribner's & Sons, 1952.

First edition of Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and one of his most famous works. Octavo, original blue cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To George Ohler with all good wishes, Ernest Hemingway.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with light rubbing and wear. Photograph of Hemingway by Lee Samuels. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Signed first editions of this work are scarce.

Upon its publication in 1952 by Charles Scribner's Sons, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954. The novel reinvigorated Hemingway's literary reputation. It initiated a reexamination of his entire body of work. The novel was received with such alacrity, that it restored many readers' confidence in Hemingway's capability as an author. Indeed, the publisher even wrote on an early dust jacket, calling the novel a "new classic," and it was compared by many critics to such revered works as William Faulkner's "The Bear" and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

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