TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT.

New-York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937 In-8 de (4) ff., 262 pp. Toile bleue nuit, titre doré sur les plats, étiquette verte au dos, jaquette d’origine. 205 x 136 mm. PREMIERE EDITION ET PREMIERE IMPRESSION To have and have not, L’UN DES CHEFS-D’ŒUVRE D’HEMINGWAY. First edition first printing with the publisher’s “A” and imprint on the copyright page. "In To Have and Have Not, Hemingway for the first time showed an interest in a possible solution of social problems through collective action" (Hart, 327). Hemingway écrit cette nouvelle entre 1935 et 1937 alors qu’il voyage en Espagne, en pleine guerre civile. Il aborde pour la première fois dans un de ses écrits les problèmes politiques et sociaux contemporains. Il y décrit des personnages embourbés dans le Key West et Cuba des années 1930. Hemingway set down his convictions on the writer in politics in the fall of 1934: ‘A writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive,’ he said, ‘by espousing a political cause, working for it, making a profession of believing in it, and if it wins he will be very well placed…. A man can be a Fascist or a Communist and if his outfit gets in he can get to be an ambassador, or have a million copies of his books printed by the government, or any of the other rewards the boys dream about…. But none of this will help him as a writer unless he finds something new to add to human knowledge while he is writing. (Ernest Hemingway “Old Newsman Writes,” Esquire 2 (December 1934) quoted by Carlos Baker). To Have and Have Not (1937) was variously received. Malcolm Cowley had no doubt of the new greatness: Hemingway, he said, is ‘perhaps as great as Mark Twain,’ and To Have and Have Not ‘contains some of the best writing he has ever done’ (NR, Oct. 20, 1937). There was no doubt that Hemingway had established himself as writer and social activist…. (Frederick J. Hoffman “Ernest Hemingway, Sixteen Modern American Authors: A Survey of Research and Criticism (Duke 1969). The true first edition of one of Hemingway’s masterpieces in collector condition. A beautiful copy in first issue jacket vibrant in color.