Description
First edition, first printing of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
Octavo, [ii], 140pp, [2]. Light blue cloth binding with title in silver on spine. The first printing, with Scribner’s “A” on copyright page. Ownership notation on the front pastedown, dated “September, 1952,” the month of publication. Light wear to blue cloth boards, faint foxing to front board. Offsetting to endpapers. Light dust remnant along top edge of text block. Free of internal marks or notations. In the publisher’s first state dust jacket, $3.00 on front flap, with no mention of Nobel Prize on the rear panel. A very good example, with a few closed tears and chipping at the head of the spine. Sunning to the spine, with some light soiling from handling, a presentable copy. Housed in custom clamshell case, blue cloth, title in gilt over blue leather label.
(Hanneman 24a) (Grissom A24.1.a)
This copy has a contemporary ownership inscription of “T. L. Mitchell,” dated September 1952, the month of publication, on the front pastedown. No connection between Mitchell and Hemingway has been established.
