Exploring the Dust Jacket Design of Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms"

July 13, 2022

Exploring the Dust Jacket  Design of Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms"

This first edition printing of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms features a striking dust jacket design by the artist Cleonike Damianakes Wilkins, who worked as an illustrator under the pen name of Cleon. Wilkins was known for her distinctive fusion of Art Deco and Hellenistic styles. She designed the dust jackets for Hemingway’s earlier The Sun Also Rises in 1926 and his later publication In Our Time in 1930, as well as Conrad Aiken’s Great Circle, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s All the Sad Young Men, and Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me the Waltz. 

Wilkins was chosen by Hemingway’s celebrated editor at Scribner’s, Maxwell Perkins. In order to differentiate Hemingway’s tale from other, competing WWI novels on the bookshop shelves, Perkins sought to widen its appeal through the dust jacket. The resulting design was Wilkins’ interpretation of Sandro Botticelli’s epic oil painting “Venus and Mars,” and the triumph of love over war. Her classical figures appealed to a female audience and allayed the more shocking elements and language in Hemingway’s blunt story of war.  

Detail of A Farewell to Arms Dust Jacket Design

Hemingway was not a fan of the cover and wrote to Perkins, “I cannot admire the awful legs on that woman or the gigantic belly muscles [on the man].” Yet, Perkins’ choice proved to be the right one. A Farewell to Arms was Hemingway’s most successful publishing venture to date. Scribner's issued seven impressions of the novel in the short time between September and December of 1929, with over 100,000 volumes sold. We are lucky enough that this first edition is also signed and inscribed by Hemingway, making it all the more collectible. 

Inscription by Ernest Hemingway in a Farewell to Arms at The Great Republic

I invite our collectors to consider this first edition, dust jacketed version, signed by Hemingway. Or if your design tastes align more with Hemingway than with Perkins, consider this first edition printing, which has been recently rebound in quarter leather and cloth boards with gilt titles and tooling to the spine.

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway Rebound in New Leather and Cloth Boards at The Great Republic

 






Also in Blog

The Beautiful and the Damned: Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Beautiful and the Damned: Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald

September 20, 2023

The Beautiful and the Damned, published in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald, presents the reader with a fictionalized telling of the perpetually problematic relationship between Zelda and Frances Scott Key Fitzgerald.  The novel is not only a landmark in the career of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but a glimpse into past high-societies wrapped up in a rebound cover of blue leather and hand-worked gilding. 

View full article →

JFK and James Bond
JFK and James Bond

August 29, 2023

President John F. Kennedy was a fan of Ian Fleming’s spy novels, and helped propel him to fame in the American market.

View full article →

California in Three Maps
California in Three Maps

August 23, 2023

California has a very interesting mapping history. During and after the Mexican-American War, efforts to map California increased. Once gold was discovered in 1848, cartographers, geographers, and business men hurried to survey the land, lay claim to it, and, ultimately, market it to Americans heading west. When California joined the Union as the thirty-first state in 1851, interest in plotting California's landscapes skyrocketed in tandem with its population. Explore the history of California with these three maps from our collection. 

View full article →