Across the River and Into the Trees
By Ernest Hemingway
 
First UK edition, first impression: London: Jonathan Cape, 1950.
 
Octavo. Original green cloth, spine with maroon title label lettered in silver, motif in red to front board. With the original pictorial dust jacket designed by Hans Tisdall, priced 9s. 6d. net.
 
A very good copy, the binding firm with a little fading to the spine as noted. Previous owner’s name and date to the front endpaper; moderate spotting to the opening and final few leaves, and, far more faintly, to the fore-edge, with the contents otherwise remaining clean.
 
The dust jacket very good indeed, unclipped, with some rubbing in places and a couple of tiny nicks to the head of the spine; a bright example of Hans Tisdall's distinctive design.
 
Published a decade after For 'Whom the Bell Tolls', 'Across the River and into the Trees' marked Hemingway's long-awaited return to the novel form. Set in post-WWII Venice, it tells the story of Colonel Richard Cantwell and his bittersweet romance with a young Italian countess—a narrative heavily influenced by Hemingway's own infatuation with Adriana Ivancich. Though initially met with harsh critical reception, the work has since been re-evaluated for its elegiac tone and its foreshadowing of the themes found in his later masterpiece, 'The Old Man and the Sea'. The title famously derives from the final words of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson: "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." Hemingway, a titan of twentieth-century letters, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.