Ernest Hemingway - Green Hills of Africa in Fine Green Morocco Binding

HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Green Hills of Africa. Decorations by Edward Shenton.

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935. First edition, first printing, with the Scribner’s “A” and publisher’s seal to the copyright page.

Octavo. Finely bound in full dark green morocco, the upper board blocked in gilt with a kudu, the spine richly gilt in compartments with raised bands, contrasting black onlay panels lettered and dated in gilt, gilt-ruled borders to the boards, hand-sewn silk headbands and hand-marbled endpapers. Illustrated throughout with Edward Shenton’s striking decorative drawings.

A beautifully presented copy of Ernest Hemingway’s African hunting memoir, recording the safari he undertook in Tanganyika, now mainland Tanzania, with his wife Pauline during 1933 and 1934. Written after Death in the Afternoon and Winner Take Nothing, the book occupies an important place in Hemingway’s career: a work in which the discipline of hunting, the landscape of East Africa and the practice of writing are continually set against one another.

In his foreword Hemingway explained that he had attempted to write “an absolutely true book” and to discover whether the reality of a country and the events of a month, precisely rendered, could possess the shaped force of fiction. The result is among his most personal works of non-fiction, moving between the pursuit of kudu and other game, descriptions of terrain and weather, and conversations about literature, rivalry, courage and failure.

The book is divided into four parts - “Pursuit and Conversation,” “Pursuit Remembered,” “Pursuit and Failure,” and “Pursuit as Happiness” - and is enriched throughout by Edward Shenton’s illustrations. His African animals, hunters, patterned borders and landscape vignettes give the first edition a distinctive visual character, particularly suited to this specially commissioned binding.

The present copy is in the earliest published form, identified by the Scribner’s “A” and publisher’s seal on the copyright page. It has been transformed into a particularly handsome collector’s volume in full green morocco: the colour chosen in direct reference to the title, with a gilt kudu dominating the front board and elaborate gilt decoration extending across the spine.

Condition: Finely bound in modern full green morocco, with rich gilt tooling and marbled endpapers, the binding presenting exceptionally well. Internally clean and attractive, with light toning consistent with age. An impressive copy of Hemingway’s African classic in a binding designed around the imagery and subject of the book.

Reference: Hanneman A13a.

A striking first printing of one of Hemingway’s central works of travel and sporting literature, combining the American first edition with an exceptionally decorative binding that captures the African landscape and quarry at the heart of the narrative.