Blasons

Blasons — marelibri

Ernest Hemingway; A Farewell to Arms ; LiteratureBiblio.com

World War I Literature Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms in Bantam's Postwar Paperback Edition 1949

1949rif. 191091949. Hemingway Ernest. A Farewell to Arms 1949 Bantam edition of Hemingway's World War I novel brings his account of an American ambulance driver on the Italian Front and his relationship with an English nurse into the mass-market paperback culture of the postwar United States. First published in 1929 and drawing upon Hemingway's own wartime experience in Italy the novel follows Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley through military hospitals the Italian retreat and their attempt to escape the war. This 1949 edition is particularly illustrative of the novel's later popular reception: two decades after its original publication and four years after the end of World War II Bantam presented Hemingway's story to paperback readers through romantic cover art and advertising that emphasized the lovers caught within a European war. Hemingway Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Bantam Books 1949. 277 pages. Illustrated wrappers with cover artwork by C. C. Beall depicting an embracing couple seated beside a large window opening onto a twilight sky. The accompanying tagline "They stole love from a world afire" recasts Hemingway's novel in the visual and promotional language of late 1940s paperback publishing placing the romance prominently before the military setting. The narrative itself concerns American ambulance driver Frederic Henry's service on the Italian Front and his relationship with English nurse Catherine Barkley with battlefield violence hospitalization retreat and displacement determining the course of their relationship. Measures 4 x 6½ inches. The edition documents the postwar commercial presentation of a major American World War I novel particularly the methods by which Bantam and illustrator C. C. Beall packaged an established literary work for the expanding paperback market. Beall's embracing couple and Bantam's "world afire" tagline emphasize romance and wartime danger in a manner specific to the period's illustrated paperback covers making this copy relevant not only to Hemingway bibliography but also to the history of American publishing cover illustration and the mass-market circulation of modernist literature. Covers remain bright. Spine creased from reading with a small crease at the lower corner and localized lifting of the glossy laminate; otherwise very good condition. A 1949 paperback issue preserving C. C. Beall's period cover design and Bantam's distinctly postwar presentation of Hemingway's World War I narrative. unknown