On Nobel Prize Day, three first editions by two American winners

To celebrate today’s announcement that Kazuo Ishiguro has won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, Henry Bemis Books pulled a few past laureates from the shelves:

Hemingway, Ernest (Nobel 1954), The Old Man and the Sea (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952, 1st. ed, 1st printing). Ex-library copy. Hardcover, octavo, 140 pp. Some foxing on the end papers; library stamps on front end papers and bottom of text block. With unclipped dust jacket in mylar covering. No library tags on the spine. Blue-tinted author photo on back cover. Overall, very good condition- uncommonly so for an ex-library copy. HBB price: $275 obo.

Hemingway, Ernest, For Whom the Bell Tolls (Scribners, 1st ed, early, unstated printing, 1940). Regarded by many as Hemingway’s masterwork, this love story set in the Spanish Civil War was published in October 1940 in a first printing of 75,000 copies. It was an immediate success and sold more than half a million copies in its first year. An endpaper note indicates this copy was purchased new in 1941. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket (some small tears and fraying at the edges, some browning on the end papers. Overall, good condition. 8.5” x 6”, 471 pp. HBB price: $100 obo.

Steinbeck, John (Nobel 1962), Sweet Thursday (Viking Press, 1st ed., 1st printing, 1954). LOC 54-7983. Steinbeck’s sequel to Cannery Row (1945), Sweet Thursday finds Doc returning to the Row after World War II and trying to restore his neglected biological supply lab and Hazel coping with a vision that he is to become President of the United States, among other neighbors’ issues. A number of plot lines from Sweet Thursday- which, since you didn’t ask, follows Lousy Wednesday were incorporated into the 1982 film, Cannery Row. A delightfully funny novel filled with vivid characters. Hardcover, price clipped dust jacket. Octavo, beige-green cloth; very good condition; dust jacket near fine, very clean and bright. 273 pp. HBB price: $299 obo.

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