The Torrents of Spring: A Romantic Novel in Honour of the Passing of a Great Race.

HEMINGWAY, Ernest.

Item Number: 141015

London: Jonathan Cape, 1933.

First English edition of Hemingway’s first novel. Octavo, bound in full crushed levant morocco by Bayntun-Riviere, gilt titles and ruling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt-ruled bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and wide inner dentelles, stamp-signed by Bayntun-Riviere, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Introduction by David Garnett. In fine condition. A very nice binding.

Ernest Hemingway’s first novel and third published book was preceded by Three Stories and Ten Poems and the collection of stories In Our Time. “Hemingway was planning a carefully engineered campaign for breaking his contract with Boni and Liveright and maneuvering to place his novel [The Sun Also Rises] with Scribner’s. The vehicle was… [the] satirical novel, The Torrents of Spring, which was clearly calculated to cause problems with his publisher, since it was a deliberate parody of Sherwood Anderson [Boni and Liveright’s best-selling author]. Boni and Liveright had the option on his next three books, one of which had to be a novel. If, however, they turned down the book that Hemingway submitted next, he was free of his obligations to the publisher and could go elsewhere.” Hemingway wrote Ezra Pound that he “had written ‘a funny book’… It was a satire on America, he claimed, ‘Probably unprintable but funny as hell… Wrote it to destroy Sherwood [Anderson] and various others… It’s first really adult thing have done. Jesus Christ it is funny… It is a regular novel only it shows up all the fakes of Anderson, Gertrude [Stein], [Sinclair] Lewis, [Willa] Cather, Hergo [Joseph Hergesheimer] and all the rest of the pretentious faking bastards… I don’t see how Sherwood will ever be able to write again” (Mellow, Hemingway).