In Our Time is the title of Ernest Hemingway's first collection of short stories, published in 1925 by Boni & Liveright, New York, and of a collection of vignettes published in 1924 in France titled in our time. Its title is derived from the English Book of Common Prayer, "Give peace in our time, O Lord".Young, 1952 p. 95: "[I]t is almost certain...that Hemingway intended a sardonic allusion to...the Book of Common Prayer."
The collection's publication history was complex. It began with six prose vignettes published by Ezra Pound in the 1923 edition of The Little Review, to which Hemingway added twelve vignettes and had published in Paris in 1924 as the in our time edition (with a lower-case title). He wrote fourteen short stories for the 1925 edition, including "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River", two of his best-known Nick Adams stories. He composed "On the Quai at Smyrna" for the 1930 edition.
The stories' themes – of alienation, loss, grief, separation – continue the work Hemingway began with the vignettes, which include descriptions of acts of war, bullfighting and current events. The collection is known for its spare language and oblique depiction of emotion, through a style known as Hemingway's "theory of omission" (iceberg theory). According to his biographer Michael Reynolds, among Hemingway's canon, "none is more confusing ... for its several parts – biographical, literary, editorial, and bibliographical – contain so many contradictions that any analysis will be flawed."Reynolds (1995), 35
Hemingway's writing style attracted attention, with literary critic Edmund Wilson saying it was "of the first distinction";quoted in Wagner-Martin (2002), 4 the 1925 edition of In Our Time is considered one of Hemingway's early masterpieces.
Background and publication history
Hemingway was 19 years old when in 1918, shortly after he was posted to the Italian Front as a Red Cross ambulance driver, he sustained a severe wound from mortar fire. For the next four months, he recuperated in a Milan hospital, where he fell in love with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. Shortly after his return to the US, she informed him that she was engaged to an Italian officer. Soon after, he turned to journalism.Putnam, Thomas (2006). "Hemingway on War and Its Aftermath". Prologue Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 1. Retrieved November 30, 2011
A few months after marrying Hadley Richardson in 1921, he and his wife moved to Paris on the strength of her private income and an agreement with the Toronto Star that would supply them with freelance articles on whatever caught his fancy. In time the paper asked him to write features on the Greco-Turkish War and the situation in post-war Germany.Desnoyers, Megan Floyd. "Ernest Hemingway: A Storyteller's Legacy" JFK Library. Retrieved September 30, 2011 In Paris he befriended Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Morley Callaghan, and John Dos Passos, establishing a particularly strong friendship with Pound. Pound's influence extended to promoting the young author, placing six of Hemingway's poems in the magazine Poetry. In August he asked Hemingway to contribute a small volume to the modernist series he was editing, and Bill Bird was publishing for his Three Mountains Press, which Pound envisioned as the "Inquest into the state of the modern English language". Pound's commission turned Hemingway's attention toward fiction, and had profound consequences on his development as a writer.Cohen (2003), 107–108
On December 2, 1922, nearly all of Hemingway's early writing – his juvenilia and apprentice fiction, including the duplicates – was lost.Reynolds (2000), 26 He had been sent on assignment to cover the Conference of Lausanne, leaving Hadley, who was sick with a cold, behind in Paris. In Lausanne he spent days covering the conference, and the evenings drinking with Lincoln Steffens.Mellow (1992), 205 Before setting off to meet him in Switzerland, thinking he would want to show his work to Steffens, Hadley packed all his manuscripts into a valise which was subsequently stolen at Gare de Lyon train station.Mellow (1992), 208 Although angry and upset, Hemingway went with Hadley to Chamby (Montreux) to ski, and apparently did not post a reward for the recovery of the valise.Reynolds (2000), 26 An early story, "Up in Michigan", survived the loss because Gertrude Stein had told him it was unprintable (in part because of a seduction scene), and he had stuffed it in a drawer.Smith (1996), 40
A month later in a letter to Pound, he mentioned that "You, naturally, would say, "Good" etc. But don't say it to me. I ain't reached that mood."Cohen (2012), 35 In his reply, Pound pointed out that Hemingway had only lost "the time it will ... take you to rewrite the parts you can remember ... If the middle, i.e., FORM, of the story is right then one ought to be able to reassemble it from memory ... If the thing wobbles and won't reform ... then it never wd. have been right."Smith (1996), 41 Critics are uncertain whether he took Pound's advice and re-created existing stories or whether everything he wrote after the loss of the suitcase was new.
The Little Review In February 1923, Hemingway and Hadley visited Italy; in Rapallo they met Pound, who almost certainly commissioned the prose pieces for the literary magazine The Little Review during their visit. Still upset at the loss of his work, Hemingway had not written since the previous December, but he slowly wrote six new paragraphs, submitting them for the March deadline.Cohen (2012), 36 Hemingway scholar Milton Cohen says at that point Hemingway knew the pieces for The Little Review would "govern the remainder of the book that Pound had commissioned."Cohen (2012), 40
The six prose pieces ranged from 75 to 187 words and were about war and bullfighting. The battle scenes came from the experiences of Hemingway's friend Chink Dorman-Smith who was at the Battle of Mons; the matador story originated from another friend, Mike Strater. Hemingway himself witnessed the events which inspired the story about the Greco-Turkish War. The last of the series was taken from news of the execution of six Greek cabinet ministers during the Trial of the Six.Cohen (2012), 37
The Little Reviews "Exiles" edition, scheduled to be published in the spring, was finally released in October 1923, leading with Hemingway's work. It featured pieces from modernists such as Gertrude Stein, George Antheil, E. E. Cummings and Jean Cocteau. Hemingway's vignettes were titled "In Our Time", suggesting a cohesive set.Cohen (2003), 106
in our time In June 1923, Hemingway took Hadley, with Robert McAlmon and Bird, to Spain where he found a new passion with his first visits to the bullfights.Cohen (2012), 41–42 During the summer he wrote five new vignettes (chapters 12–16), all about bullfighting,Cohen (2012), 44 finishing the last two on his return to Paris in August.Cohen (2012), 45 That summer he also honed new narrative techniques in chapters 7–11. In August he reported to Pound that he was about to begin the last two pieces (chapters 17 and 18), implemented revisions that Pound suggested, and sent the manuscript to Bill Bird. Then he left Paris with Hadley (who was pregnant with their first child) for Toronto,Cohen (2012), 48 where he was living when Bird finished producing the book.
The pieces he submitted to Bird were at first untitled (Pound called the submission Blank);Mellow (1992), 188 later the title in our time – from the Book of Common Prayer – was chosen.Mellow (1992), 239 Bird printed the volume on a hand-press with handmade paper, telling Hemingway, "I'm going to pull something really fancy with your book". The book contained eighteen vignettesReynolds (1995), 40 and only thirty-one pages; each one was laid out with plenty of white space, highlighting the brevity of the prose. According to Cohen, the "visual suddenness intensifies its narrative abruptness, heightens the shock of violence, and the chillingly matter-of-fact tone".Cohen (2012), 59 The book's presentation was intended as unconventional, with its use of lowercase throughout and lack of quotation marks. When challenged by American editors over the use of lowercase in the titles, Hemingway admitted that it could be seen as "silly and affected".Waldhorn (2002), 259
Bird designed the distinctive dust jacket – a collage of newspaper articles in four languagesTetlow (1992), 46 – to highlight that the vignettes carried a sense of journalism or news.Meyers (1985), 141 The frontispiece is a woodcut portrait of the author, which during the printing process bled through to the next page, ruining more than half the print run so that only 170 of the 300 copies printed were deemed suitable to sell. The rest were sent to reviewers and friends.Baker (1972), 17
In Our Time A year later Hemingway was back in Paris, where he wrote some of his best short stories and told Scott Fitzgerald that, of the new material, "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River" were superior.Smith (1983), 271–272 Over the next six months, one of his most productive periods according to critic Jackson Benson, he wrote eight short stories.Benson (1983), 105 The stories were combined with the earlier vignettes and sent to Boni & Liveright in New York toward the end of the year.Mellow (1992), 188 In March he was in Schruns, Austria when the acceptance cable and $100 advance arrived, with a request to option his next two books. Directly afterward, he received a letter from Max Perkins of Scribner's, who had read Bird's Paris edition and thought it lacked commercial appeal, and queried whether the young writer had stories to offer to bolster the collection. In his reply, Hemingway explained that he had already entered a contract with Boni & Liveright.Mellow (1992), 282–283 When he received the contract for the book, Boni & Liveright requested that "Up in Michigan" be dropped for fear it might be censored; in response Hemingway wrote "The Battler" to replace the earlier story.Reynolds (1995), 43
The 1925 New York edition contained the fourteen short stories with the vignettes interwoven as "interchapters".Smith (1996), 40–42 Boni & Liveright published the book on October 5, 1925,Mellow (1992), 314 with a print-run of 1335 copies, costing $2 each, which saw four reprints.Hagemann (1983), 39 The firm designed a "modish" dust jacket, similar to the Paris edition, and elicited endorsements from Ford Madox Ford, Gilbert Seldes, John Dos Passos, and Donald Ogden Stewart. Boni & Liveright claimed American copyright for the works published in France.Leff (1999), 22
Hemingway was disappointed with the publisher's marketing efforts,Mellow (1992), 317–318 and that December he complained to Boni & Liveright about their handling of the book, citing a lack of advertising, claiming they could have had "20,000 in sales" and that he should have requested a $1000 advance.Mellow (1992), 320 He later broke his contract with the firm, signing with Max Perkins at Scribner's the following year. Scribner's bought the rights from Boni & Liveright,Hagemann (1983), 46 releasing the second American edition on October 24, 1930, which saw one reprint. The Scribner's edition included an introduction by Edmund Wilson and Hemingway's "Introduction by the Author", which was renamed as "On the Quai at Smyrna" in the 1938 publication of The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories.Hagemann (1983), 43 When In Our Time was re-issued in 1955, "On the Quai at Smyrna" replaced "Indian Camp" as the first story.Reynolds (1995), 49
Contents 1924 edition