A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition
The definitive edition of the classic World War I romance novel, 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 tragic 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 frontlines—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 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.
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 tragic 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 frontlines—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 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.
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Community Reviews
Recommended to me by my Writing Comp professor. Highly influenced my writing. Very emotionally potent book.
I always wanted to read this - so glad I did! What a great love story - don't read this if love & war isn't your thing, but it was so romantic. The only thing I didn't like, was that I was still sad when I finished it - I didn't fully feel like there was something good among all the tragedy.
Brilliant and Poignant, One of the most gripping books I have ever read. It is impossible to keep away from praying for the characters as we go along. Of men and their arms and the world of war. Such beautifully depicted is the book that its impossible to put down.
Hemingway was born and grew up literally 20 miles south of where I grew up, yet I was never really motivated to pick up a single book of his. I had learned, however, that if you name-dropped Hemingway at any given event, people always seemed to deify him or deplore him: there was no middle ground. My girlfriend falls in the latter category. She read The Old Man and the Sea and came out hardly impressed. I, on the other hand, might be the next person you meet ready to sanctify him. Although this is my first and only work of his that I’ve read, as of now, I’m not surprised why many consider A Farewell to Arms his greatest contribution to literature. Hemingway operates in the manner of a burlesque show; you show enough to keep it interesting but not enough to give it all away:
"If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing."
-Ernest Hemingway
From page one, the choppy literary technique spurs the fluidity of the story. Frederic Henry, the main protagonist, is constantly moving. As soon as you got comfortable with one of the many settings…BOOM…life change…and you’re taken into a whirlwind of translocations. From the Italian-Austrian war front to Henry’s convalescent leave in Milan to an Italian retreat to his escape to Switzerland with the love of his life, Catherine Barkley, the book is one big unceremonious departure from one place to the next.
However, apart from the physical movement, the book also delves into quite an emotional itinerary as well. As soon as Henry realizes a complacent state of affairs, he’s wretchedly thrust into a new situation where the rules having seemingly changed. I was Henry’s biggest proponent, wanting so desperately for him to finally be able to find an equilibrium in place of constantly being decamped. Unfortunately, this novel is better aligned with tragedy and heartbreak than my desires.
Overall, this book is a great, quick read. At certain points, I was easily lost, especially in the conversations as Hemingway leaves out many of the “he said” and “she said.” I had to backtrack just to figure out who said what. However, this very style helps highlight the senselessness of war, one that is reminiscent of the sentiments expressed in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 as well as many other novels.
"If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing."
-Ernest Hemingway
From page one, the choppy literary technique spurs the fluidity of the story. Frederic Henry, the main protagonist, is constantly moving. As soon as you got comfortable with one of the many settings…BOOM…life change…and you’re taken into a whirlwind of translocations. From the Italian-Austrian war front to Henry’s convalescent leave in Milan to an Italian retreat to his escape to Switzerland with the love of his life, Catherine Barkley, the book is one big unceremonious departure from one place to the next.
However, apart from the physical movement, the book also delves into quite an emotional itinerary as well. As soon as Henry realizes a complacent state of affairs, he’s wretchedly thrust into a new situation where the rules having seemingly changed. I was Henry’s biggest proponent, wanting so desperately for him to finally be able to find an equilibrium in place of constantly being decamped. Unfortunately, this novel is better aligned with tragedy and heartbreak than my desires.
Overall, this book is a great, quick read. At certain points, I was easily lost, especially in the conversations as Hemingway leaves out many of the “he said” and “she said.” I had to backtrack just to figure out who said what. However, this very style helps highlight the senselessness of war, one that is reminiscent of the sentiments expressed in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 as well as many other novels.
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