Beschreibung:

HEMINGWAY, ERNEST. Two autograph letters signed ("Ernest Hemingway") to Dr. Don Carlos Guffey in Kansas City, written from Key West, 12 and 17 April 1931. 3 1/4 pages, folio, on three sheets, with a quarter-page postscript on the verso of the second sheet of the second letter, with two postmarked envelopes addressed by Hemingway and with his name and return address, fold creases , but in excellent condition. With a typed letter signed from Pauline Hemingway (Ernest's second wife) to Dr. Guffey, n.p., 26 May [1931?], 1 page, 8vo, with envelope. All in a half morocco slipcase. "THINK OF THAT DAMNED 'IN OUR TIME' SELLING FOR $200" Hemingway writes to the obstetrician who delivered their sons Patrick and Gregory by Caesarean section. 12 April: "...I would like very much to give you a copy of Three Stories and Ten Poems which is one of the books you mentioned in your letter as hard to get I believe -- I own one and would prefer for you to have it since I am not a collector and you are. Anyway this letter is an I.O.U. for one copy of the above book -- I'm sorry not to have a 1st of the In Our Time [the Paris, 1924, in our time ] but believe the 3 and 10 [ Three Stories & Ten Poems ] is the harder to get of the two -- Certainly it is the first I ever published..." 17 April: Hemingway writes that he will autograph books for Dr. Guffey when he and Pauline are in Kansas City in November, and continues: "...In case anything should happen to me [on his trip to Spain] -- in the bullring or any other dumb way -- I have told Pauline where to find the copy of the 3 Stories and 10 Poems and that it is to go to you...About MSS. I either lost them or gave them away as I went along. Have always been completely opposed to selling them since to the person writing them himself they are only so much scrap paper once the work is accomplished...But since people began buying them up have given some to friends who were writers and broke telling them to sell them if they wanted and keep whatever they would bring...I'm not through writing by a damned sight, barring acts of God, and will have some MSS. of stories as soon as I get going again that I will be very happy to give to you..." Hemingway mentions going to Madrid "to finish this bullfight book" ( Death in the Afternoon , published 1932), then discusses Kiki's Memoirs (Paris, 1930, with an introduction by Hemingway): "...The Kiki book is a lousy -- a terrible translation [by Samuel Putnam] -- the original was really very good...The translation as it is misses every quality the original had..." The postscript: "Think of that damned In Our Time [the Paris in our time ] selling for $200 [at an auction]. I got not one cent for its publication -- Bill Bird [of the Three Mountains Press] printed it for the pleasure of printing on a hand press-- he sold the press to Nancy Cunard finally -- and while all the copies sold out at once what they brought went to pay for the cost of printing the other books he made that didn't sell. I only got $200 from Liveright for the original In Our Time [New York, 1925] as published in U.S. with all the stories. Could not sell a single one of the stories in it to magazines -- It is a strange business." Not in Letters , ed. Baker, and presumably unpublished. Provenance : Jonathan Goodwin (sale, Part III, Sotheby Parke Bernet 12 April 1978, lot 716). (3)