Across the river and into the trees

8 vo., 308 pp.

Publisher’s dark blue cloth stamped in gilt at back and front cover, dust jacket.

210 x 145 mm.

FIRST EDITION FIRST PRINTING OF ONE OF HEMINGWAY’S MASTERPIECES, with the Scribner's "A" printed on the copyright page.

The original first issue dustjacket showing $3.00. is vibrant in color.

Set in Venice at the close of World War II, Across the River and into the Trees is the bittersweet story of a middle-aged American colonel, scarred by war and in failing health, who finds love with a young Italian countess at the very moment when his life is becoming a physical hardship to him.

It is a love so overpowering and spontaneous that it revitalizes the man's spirit and encourages him to dream of a future, even though he knows that there can be no hope for long. Spanning a matter of hours, Across the River and into the Trees is tender and moving, yet tragic in the inexorable shadow of what must come.

“I consider Hemingway not only one of the finest novelists of the twentieth century, but also one of the greatest American writers of all time, among a distinguished handful that includes Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Faulkner. Across the River and into the Trees falls... The book’s title is a paraphrase of the final words reportedly uttered in delirium by the dying Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, and to some degree the novel sounds a kind of death knell of its own. It was the last full-length work before The Old Man and the Sea, the 1952 novella that revitalized his reputation but yet was the last thing he turned out before his death. The Colonel is fifty-one, not without coincidence the same age as his creator, and 
like him has vivid recollections of Italy in the Great War. Once a general but demoted for some military debacle in the Second World War, Colonel Cantwell is in Venice five years after the war’s end visiting his unlikely girlfriend, a beautiful nineteen year old wealthy aristocrat he calls “Daughter” and with whom he carries on a not entirely platonic relationship that is also never entirely consummated. More significantly, the Colonel is dying of some unspecified heart ailment, and is making a conspicuous effort to meet his end graciously and heroically. Reading this at sixty I was struck with the same force that I was at sixteen. It is why we read Hemingway. It is why I read Hemingway. When I finished the book, a friend asked what I thought of it. I said: “It’s not the best Hemingway, but it is Hemingway and therefore it is the best”

A beautiful copy of the 1st edition 1st printing preserved in its publisher’s cloth, with no bookmarks or writing, in bright first issue dustjacket; in collector’s condition.

BEL EXEMPLAIRE DE CETTE ORIGINALE CONSERVÉ DANS SA TOILE D’ÉDITEUR, AVEC SA JAQUETTE D’ORIGINE.