Because of the fame The Sun Also Rises brought Ernest Hemingway, when Men Without Women was published just one year later, in 1927, it commanded popular and critical attention. Even reviewers who objected to a masculine emphasis and a sometimes harsh realism identified stories in the collection that could not be ignored. Close commentary, with special attention to allusions, demonstrates that Men Without Women merits a place among the best story collections in American literature.

The first volume in this new series is Reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, by H. R. Stoneback. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway’s first big novel, immediately established him as one of the great prose stylists and preeminent writers of his time. It is also the book that encapsulates the angst of the post–World War I generation, known as the “Lost Generation.” This poignant story of a group of American and English expatriates on an excursion to Pamplona represents a dramatic shift in Hemingway’s ever-evolving style. Featuring Left Bank Paris in the 1920s and brutally realistic descriptions of bullfighting in Spain, the story is about the flamboyant Lady Brett Ashley and the hapless Jake Barnes in an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions.

Published in 1937, Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not is that rare example of a novel whose cultural impact far outweighs its critical reputation. Long criticized for its fragmented form, its ham-fisted approach to politics, and its hard-boiled obsession with cojones, this blistering tale of a Florida Straits boat captain named Harry Morgan desperately trying to survive the economic ravages of the Great Depression by running rum and revolutionaries to Havana has fueled tourist industries in Key West and Cuba and has inspired at least three movie adaptations (including a classic cowritten by William Faulkner and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall).

In this comprehensive guide, Lewis and Roos reveal how A Farewell to Arms represents a complex alchemy of Hemingway’s personal experience as a Red Cross ambulance driver in 1918, his extensive historical research of a time period and terrain with which he was personally unfamiliar, and the impact of his vast reading in the great works of 19th-century fiction. Ultimately, Lewis and Roos assert, Hemingway’s great novel is not simply a story of love and war, as most have concluded, but an intricate novel of ideas exploring the clash of reason and faith and deep questions of epistemology.

Published in 1940, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is widely considered a masterpiece of war literature. A bestseller upon its release, the novel has long been both admired and ridiculed for its depiction of Robert Jordan’s military heroism and wartime romance. Yet its validation of seemingly conflicting narratives and its rendering of the intricate world its characters inhabit, as well as its dense historical, literary, and biographical allusions, have made it a work that remains a focus of interest and study.

In Reading Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden, Carl P. Eby examines Hemingway’s original unrevised manuscript in relation to Scribner’s highly edited edition. The product of 30 years of research, this volume is the first to clarify for readers which parts of the original work had been retained, altered, and discarded in the publisher’s text. No other treatment of the text has been so thorough in its analysis and annotations. This volume gives the Scribner’s edition and the original manuscript equal consideration, helping readers to better understand the relationship between both versions of the novel.

The Old Man and the Sea is a deceptively simple work. An old man goes fishing. He catches a giant marlin after much struggle. Sharks attack and destroy the fish. The old man is left with the bare bones of the fish—a Monday morning “fish story.” But much lies beneath the surface. The action is condensed and presented in carefully crafted images, in words and details selected because of their multivalent meanings, and in several external narrative strands, present primarily as allusions and echoes.

Through line-by-line annotations and accompanying commentary, this book weaves together the biographical, historical, and cultural threads of one of Hemingway’s more overlooked works, thus providing much needed guidance for Hemingway scholars and general readers alike.

During the 1870s, the organization and stewardship of American culture by the upper classes began to take hold on a mass scale, due in part to the founding of museums, municipal libraries, symphony halls, theaters, and public parks. In addition, periodicals such as Scribner’s Magazine, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly became major players in shaping the country’s cultural ideals. Founded in 1870, Scribner’s Monthly: An Illustrated Magazine for the People, which became The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine in 1881, offered its predominantly upper-middle-class readership historical and biographical essays, serialized novels, scientific and technological updates, and discussions of contemporary events and issues, such as woman suffrage, Chinese immigration, labor strikes, and “the Negro problem.”

The short reign of Edward VI was a turbulent one, even by Tudor standards. The kingdom was threatened by widespread unrest, riots, and rebellions among the common people. In this study, Beer looks at these dramatic events from the viewpoint of the rebellious commoners. Above the clamor of the streets and countryside runs the intricate story of the interaction and often confusing relations among
the commoners, the gentry, and the king’s councillors in London.