Desirable unsigned first edition book: The Old Man and the Sea. First edition, first printing (with “A” and Scribner’s seal on copyright page). NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket, 5.75 x 8.25, 140 pages. Book condition: VG/G+, with an ownership inscription to first free end page, chipping to head of spine, and rubbing to gilt-stamped title on spine; and edgewear, some minor losses, and staining to the price-clipped jacket.
Written during a two-month span in 1951, The Old Man and the Sea was published in a limited run of 50,000 copies in September of 1952. In conjunction with its wildly popular publication in Life Magazine, the novella earned immediate critical and commercial success, reaffirming Hemingway’s place as a novelist, and subsequently rewarding him with both the Pulitzer and Nobel Peace Prize. A definitive piece of the American literary canon.
