The Sun Also Rises - Publication History

Publication History

Hemingway likely broke the contract with his publisher for the opportunity to have The Sun Also Rises published by Scribner's. In December 1925 he quickly wrote The Torrents of Spring—a satirical novella attacking Sherwood Anderson—and sent it to his publishers Boni & Liveright. His three-book contract with them included a termination clause should they reject a single submission. Unamused by the satire against one of their most saleable authors, Boni & Liveright immediately rejected it and terminated the contract. Within weeks Hemingway signed a contract with Scribner's, who agreed to publish The Torrents of Spring and all of his subsequent work.

Scribner's published the novel on 22 October 1926. Its first edition consisted of 5090 copies, selling at $2.00 per copy. Cleonike Damianakes illustrated the dust jacket with a Hellenistic design of a scantily robed woman, head bent, one hand holding an apple, thighs exposed. The title was decorated with apples—the intent was to present a quasi-sexual image tastefully. Two months later the book was in a second printing with 7000 copies sold. Subsequent printings were ordered; by 1928, after the publication of Hemingway's short story collection Men Without Women, the novel was in its eighth printing. In 1927 the novel was published in the UK by Jonathan Cape, title Fiesta, and the novel's two epigraphs were left out in the UK edition. In the 1990s, the British editions were titled Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises. Two decades later, in 1947, Scribner's released three of Hemingway's works as a boxed set, including The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

In 1983 The New York Times reported that The Sun Also Rises had been in print continuously since its publication in 1926, and was likely one of the most translated titles in the world. At that time Scribner's began to print cheaper mass-market paperbacks of the book, in addition to the more expensive trade paperbacks already in print. In 2006 Simon & Schuster began to produce audiobook versions of Hemingway's novels, including The Sun Also Rises.