A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway, Ernest - 1929

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929 First edition, first printing, first issue dust jacket with Catherine Barclay's name misspelled as "Katharine" to front flap. Publisher's black cloth with gold paper labels lettered in black to front board and spine; in the original pictorial dust jacket with a drawing by Cleon. A near fine copy, light offsetting to endpapers and bookplate to front pastedown, scattered spots to text block edges, one bump to the outer edge of the front board, small brown stain to front title label; in a near fine dust jacket with some mild toning and light wear to the extremities, a few minor chips to the spine ends and corners. Overall, a bright, beautiful copy. Hanneman A8a. Set in Italy during World War I, A Farewell to Arms tells the story of a romance between the protagonist Frederic Henry, an American serving as a lieutenant in the Italian ambulance corps, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse tending to wounded soldiers. Widely considered one of the best novels to come from the war, the novel is, as the original dust jacket proclaims, "the very essence of beauty as twisted and made tragic by war" that "expresses the innermost nature of war." Unlike many of the other war novels by contemporary writers, A Farewell to Arms addresses not only the aftermath of WWI but the events of the war itself, specifically the Italian Front around the Battle of Caporetto of Autumn 1917. Accordingly, it stood out amongst the war novels, becoming Hemingway's first best-seller and establishing him as a premier American writer. Interestingly, in his 1958 interview with The Paris Review, Hemingway famously remarked, "I rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.". First Edition.. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Dust Jacket Included.