Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea: An award-winning treasure to discover at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair

We know the fellow in the image is not Ernest Hemingway and we’re pretty sure it’s not Santiago, the fisherman hero of The Old Man and the Sea. He IS a fisherman and he appears to be on his way to his favorite fishing grounds. When it’s time to pull in the nets, though, we guess he’ll have to come back to the book later. Clearly he’s discovered himself a treasure in Hemingway’s book.

By the time Ernest Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea (1952), it had been a dozen years since he had had a widely acclaimed novel. That was For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).

There had been Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) but that had a lukewarm reception, though it was at the top of The New York Times bestseller list briefly.

It took Hemingway about six weeks to write The Old Man and the Sea, when he finally got to it. He’d heard the basic story some 15 to 20 years before from a fishing guide he knew in Cuba. He first wrote about the tale of an old man who battles a giant marlin in an article for Esquire magazine in 1936.

He sent the draft for the novella around to this publisher and his agent, and to close friends and relatives. He got very positive responses. Originally, he had mind for it to be part of a “sea trilogy”  but it soon became clear the novella could stand on its own.

Hemingway’s friend and agent, Leland Hayward, got the editorial board at LIFE magazine interested and Hemingway agreed to let LIFE publish it two weeks before Scribner’s published it in book form.

Heminway’s work went on to be on The New York Times bestseller list for six months. It received the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and there was special mention of it when Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.

You can still find copies of LIFE magazine issue of September 1, 1952 at book fairs and with booksellers. You can also find copies of first editions as well as later printings of The Old Man and the Sea. No promises that there will be any at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair in March but it’s highly likely. Other Hemingway works are also likely to be found at the book fair.
 
Come and explore the treasures that abound at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. It’s happening on Saturday and Sunday, March 1-2, 2025 at The Coliseum in downtown St. Petersburg.
 
Tickets are available at Eventbrite.com. Just search of the 2025 book fair. You also can visit our website at floridaantiquarianbookfair.com
 
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