This collection of recent essays on Hemingway and For Whom the Bell Tolls demonstrates the centrality of this Spanish Civil war novel in the author's life and canon and reestablishes the book's status as an American masterpiece. It provides a long overdue reassessment of the novel, which was an overwhelming critical and popular success in 1940. Following Rena Sanderson's introduction, the volume begins with a reconsideration of Hemingway's career by novelist Kurt Vonnegut. Ten literary essays by both well-known specialists and new voices follow. Employing a diversity of critical methods, including the biographical, historical, political, textual, ethical, feminist, religious, mythic, generic, and post-structuralist, these essays reveal the literary and historical richness of Hemingway's novel. Informed by recent developments in Hemingway scholarship, the chapters add up to a valuable Hemingway resource. The book is an important contribution to Hemingway studies, American literary scholarship, and American studies. It is essential reading for anyone working on For Whom the Bell Tolls.

The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 3: 1926-1929, featuring many previously unpublished letters, follows a rising star as he emerges from the literary Left Bank of Paris and moves into the American mainstream. Maxwell Perkins, legendary editor at Scribner's, nurtured the young Hemingway's talent, accepting his satirical novel Torrents of Spring (1926) in order to publish what would become a signature work of the twentieth century: The Sun Also Rises (1926). By early 1929 Hemingway had completed A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway's letters of this period also reflect landmark events in his personal life, including the dissolution of his first marriage, his remarriage, the birth of his second son, and the suicide of his father. As the volume ends in April 1929, Hemingway is setting off from Key West to return to Paris and standing on the cusp of celebrity as one of the major writers of his time.