The Sun Also Sets

The Library of America is something of a publishing curiosity. Its declared aim is to preserve America’s literary heritage “by publishing, and keeping in print, authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing.” Yet, unlike those produced by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in France, these “authoritative editions” offer minimal editorial matter. Their most notable feature is a year-by-year biographical outline of the author in question. Otherwise, there is an account of the textual history of the works included, with variants, and notes that are strictly explanatory. No critical introduction or evaluation is attempted. The volume under review here, Ernest Hemingway: “A Farewell to Arms” & Other Writings, 1927–1932, follows one containing Hemingway’s work from 1918 to 1926.¹ The three books it brings together—Men Without Women (1927), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and Death in the Afternoon (1932)—are all readily available individually. Prospective purchasers who already have copies might well wonder what more they are getting for forty-five dollars. The answer: a repunctuated and unbowdlerized text, along with thirty-four letters from the period, many of them to Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway’s editor at Scribner’s, which usefully fill out the background.