A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition

The definitive edition of the classic novel of love during wartime, featuring all of the alternate endings: "Fascinating...serves as an artifact of a bygone craft, with handwritten notes and long passages crossed out, giving readers a sense of an author's process" (The New York Times).

Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield--weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion--this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.

Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right. This edition collects all of the alternative endings together for the first time, along with early drafts of other essential passages, offering new insight into Hemingway's craft and creative process and the evolution of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Featuring Hemingway's own 1948 introduction to an illustrated reissue of the novel, a personal foreword by the author's son Patrick Hemingway, and a new introduction by the author's grandson Seán Hemingway, this edition of A Farewell to Arms is truly a celebration.

BUY THE BOOK

352 pages

Average rating: 7.48

48 RATINGS

|

4 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

mjex19
Jul 18, 2023
6/10 stars
Hemingway was Mr Good Times Happy Fella
Renzmo
Jul 08, 2023
8/10 stars
If you have sex you will get pregnant and you will die
E Clou
May 10, 2023
8/10 stars
2022 update: I read this in high school and just reread it. I don't think I understood any of it at the time. Shakespeare probably made more sense to me at that age than the topics of this book: World War I, experiencing death close up, love and romance in a time with no contraception, pregnancy, and birth. It's a sadly fitting book for 2022 in America.
Horatio
Feb 16, 2023
10/10 stars
One of the best mix of romance and war, if you are melancholic person who wants to feel dangers of war and motivation of love, this book is for you.

See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.