Hemingway Dishes on The Lost Generation
The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.
Price:
$15,000.00
First edition, second printing. Illustrated, xxi, 378, vi, [1] pp. 8vo. Grey linen, stamped and printed. Spine and top edge sunned, some light soiling from handling, partially unopened, very good, with Bennett Schneider Book Seller ticket at rear.
Item #372878
Inscribed by Hemingway to his Kansas City Cousin, Ruth Lowry: "Dear Ruth: The girl who wrote this was very lovely looking and a pretty good poet – was married to one of the most horrid citizens I have ever known, now divorced. Think one has a Guggenheim fellowship – what a mine of information the fellow is,— / Ernest—"
The "lovely looking" "pretty good poet" who wrote this, Genevieve Taggard (1894–1948), was an acquaintance of Hemingway's, known to him from his travels in expatriate and leftist circles. Elsewhere he called her “a good poet” with a “very good heart" (Maris, Kathryn, "Buried twice", TLS, Sept. 27, 2024). The "horrid citizen" Hemingway refers to is author Robert L. Wolf (1895–1970), a Jewish radical from a wealthy Cleveland family, who was married to Taggard from 1921–1934, so the inscription must have been made after this date. Wolf lived in Paris from 1926–1928, where he was part of Hemingway’s social circle, and known for his amorous affairs and his struggles with mental illness. Wolf's letters to Taggard during this period mostly detail the agony of their failing relationship, but Taggard has suggested that he also blamed his failure to produce novels to the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood.
The recipient of the inscription is Ruth White Lowry (1884–1974), Hemingway's Kansas City Cousin. Hemingway was familiar with the city, having spent time there as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. After returning from Europe, Ernest and his second wife Pauline spent time in Arkansas with Pauline's family; they needed somewhere with a good hospital where Pauline could give birth to their son, so he went up to stay with Ruth and her husband Malcolm in their large house in Mission Hills, where he worked on A Farewell to Arms, writing pages 156–260 there in the mornings, and swimming in their swimming pool in the afternoon and drinking bootleg Scotch at the country club. It was there that Pauline suffered a life-threatening cesarean section that informed the childbirth scene at the end of his novel. They returned in 1931 so that Pauline could give birth to their second child under the care of the same attending doctor, and it was in the Lowry's house that Hemingway finished Death in the Afternoon.
Item #372878
Inscribed by Hemingway to his Kansas City Cousin, Ruth Lowry: "Dear Ruth: The girl who wrote this was very lovely looking and a pretty good poet – was married to one of the most horrid citizens I have ever known, now divorced. Think one has a Guggenheim fellowship – what a mine of information the fellow is,— / Ernest—"
The "lovely looking" "pretty good poet" who wrote this, Genevieve Taggard (1894–1948), was an acquaintance of Hemingway's, known to him from his travels in expatriate and leftist circles. Elsewhere he called her “a good poet” with a “very good heart" (Maris, Kathryn, "Buried twice", TLS, Sept. 27, 2024). The "horrid citizen" Hemingway refers to is author Robert L. Wolf (1895–1970), a Jewish radical from a wealthy Cleveland family, who was married to Taggard from 1921–1934, so the inscription must have been made after this date. Wolf lived in Paris from 1926–1928, where he was part of Hemingway’s social circle, and known for his amorous affairs and his struggles with mental illness. Wolf's letters to Taggard during this period mostly detail the agony of their failing relationship, but Taggard has suggested that he also blamed his failure to produce novels to the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood.
The recipient of the inscription is Ruth White Lowry (1884–1974), Hemingway's Kansas City Cousin. Hemingway was familiar with the city, having spent time there as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. After returning from Europe, Ernest and his second wife Pauline spent time in Arkansas with Pauline's family; they needed somewhere with a good hospital where Pauline could give birth to their son, so he went up to stay with Ruth and her husband Malcolm in their large house in Mission Hills, where he worked on A Farewell to Arms, writing pages 156–260 there in the mornings, and swimming in their swimming pool in the afternoon and drinking bootleg Scotch at the country club. It was there that Pauline suffered a life-threatening cesarean section that informed the childbirth scene at the end of his novel. They returned in 1931 so that Pauline could give birth to their second child under the care of the same attending doctor, and it was in the Lowry's house that Hemingway finished Death in the Afternoon.
