A Rare Hemingway First Edition Makes Headlines at Auction

How a slim 1923 volume became one of the most meaningful touchstones in Hemingway’s early career

Long before Ernest Hemingway became one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, he released a slim, quietly printed volume in Paris that would mark the true beginning of his literary life: Three Stories and Ten Poems. Nearly a century later, that same unassuming debut surfaced at auction and achieved a remarkable price — a reminder of just how far the young author from Oak Park, CA had come.

Paris, 1923 — The Birth of a Voice

In 1923, Hemingway was twenty-four, newly married, and living among the modernist expatriates who were reshaping literature in the cafés of Paris. He was working as a correspondent by day and refining his craft by night, encouraged by Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and others who immediately recognized the clarity and urgency of his emerging style.

It was in this atmosphere that writer and publisher Robert McAlmon agreed to produce Hemingway’s first book under his small press, Contact Editions. Only about 300 copies were printed — a tiny run even by the standards of the time — making the book extraordinarily rare today.

Why It Matters

Three Stories and Ten Poems is exactly what its title promises: three short stories (“Up in Michigan,” “Out of Season,” and “My Old Man”) and ten poems reflecting Hemingway’s early experiments with form, rhythm, and imagery. While Hemingway would not pursue poetry later in life, the poems are striking for their brevity and directness, qualities that would echo throughout his later prose.

The three stories offer glimpses of the writer he was becoming — concise, emotionally charged, and attentive to the understated moments where meaning lives between the lines.

This small volume captures Hemingway on the cusp of everything: before In Our Time, before the novels, before fame changed the course of his life. It stands as the first bound expression of the voice that would redefine American fiction. Collectors, scholars, and admirers treasure it not just for its rarity, but for its place in the evolution of a singular literary style.

A Modern Reminder of Its Value

When a copy surfaced at auction in recent years, it achieved an extraordinary price of $81,250 — an astonishing figure for such a thin early work. The sale underscored the enduring power of Hemingway’s legacy and the continued fascination with the earliest artifacts of his creative life.

A Lasting Legacy in Fewer Than 60 Pages

Nearly a century after its publication, Three Stories and Ten Poems endures as a symbol of beginnings — a modest book created in a Paris workshop that went on to become one of the most sought-after Hemingway volumes in the world. Scarce, historic, and deeply meaningful, it represents the moment Hemingway first stepped from journalism into literature, carrying with him the promise of a voice that would echo for generations.