Publication History
Bill Bird's Parisian high-end printing company, Three Mountains Press, founded in the early 1920s, was edited by Pound who sought to "keep the series strictly modern". Their aim was to publish well-produced limited private editions by a handful of modern authors, including Pound himself, and Joyce, in small print-runs. Hemingway, who was unpublished, gave Bird the manuscript of vignettes that Hemingway titled Blank, which he later titled in our time from the Book of Common Prayer.
The book was first published in Paris in 1924, printed on handmade paper in a 38-page volume. A printing mistake ruined many of the copies so only 170 of the 300 printed were released for sale; the rest were sent to reviewers and friends. It was the last in series printed by Bird and edited by Pound. The volume included 18 vignettes written the year before, presented as untitled chapters. Because the pieces were meant to convey a sense of journalism or news, Bird designed a distinctive dust-jacket showing a collage of newspaper articles, and a woodcut of Hemingway was made for the frontispiece.
The American edition of In Our Time was to include a collection of short stories as well as the vignettes printed in the Parisian edition. Most of the stories were written in 1924. Sixteen of the vignettes from the earlier Parisian edition were kept as numbered interchapter sketches; two had been published in his first book "Three Stories and 10 poems"; two were from in our time; six had been published in literary magazines. Four had never been published before. Hemingway planned to end the volume with the two-part short story "Big Two-Hearted River" that he wrote in the summer and fall of 1924. Boni & Liveright published the book in 1925, with a print-run of 1335 copies, costing $2 each. Hemingway was unhappy that Boni & Liveright published the volume with such a small print-run but he was contractually bound to the company who held first refusal rights for three more books.
Read more about this topic: In Our Time (book)
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