The Sun Also Rises is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway. It portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona and watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now «recognized as Hemingway’s greatest work» and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner’s. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print.
The novel is a roman à clef: the characters are based on people in Hemingway’s circle and the action is based on events, particularly Hemingway’s life in Paris in the 1920s and a trip to Spain in 1925 for the Pamplona festival and fishing in the Pyrenees. Hemingway converted to Catholicism as he wrote the novel, and Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera notes that protagonist Jake Barnes, a Catholic, was «a vehicle for Hemingway to rehearse his own conversion, testing the emotions that would accompany one of the most important acts of his life.» Hemingway presents his notion that the «Lost Generation»—considered to have been decadent, dissolute and irretrievably damaged by World War I—was in fact resilient and strong. Hemingway investigates the themes of love and death, the revivifying power of nature and the concept of masculinity. His spare writing style, combined with his restrained use of description to convey characterizations and action, demonstrates his «Iceberg Theory» of writing.
Background
In the 1920s, Hemingway lived in Paris as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, and traveled to Smyrna to report on the Greco–Turkish War. He wanted to use his journalism experience to write fiction, believing that a story could be based on real events when a writer distilled his own experiences in such a way that, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, «what he made up was truer than what he remembered».
With his wife Hadley Richardson, Hemingway first visited the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona in 1923, where he was following his recent passion for bullfighting. The couple returned to Pamplona in 1924—enjoying the trip immensely—this time accompanied by Chink Dorman-Smith, John Dos Passos, and Donald Ogden Stewart and his wife. The two returned a third time in June 1925 and stayed at the hotel of his friend Juanito Quintana. That year, they brought with them a different group of American and British expatriates: Bill Smith, Hemingway’s Michigan boyhood friend; Stewart; recently divorced Duff, Lady Twysden and her lover Pat Guthrie; and Harold Loeb. Hemingway’s memory spanning multiple trips might explain the inconsistent time frame in the novel indicating both 1924 and 1925. In Pamplona, the group quickly disintegrated. Hemingway, attracted to Duff, was jealous of Loeb, who had recently been on a romantic getaway with her; by the end of the week the two men had a public fistfight. Against this background was the influence of the young matador from Ronda, Cayetano Ordóñez, whose brilliance in the bullring affected the spectators. Ordóñez honored Hemingway’s wife by presenting her, from the bullring, with the ear of a bull he killed. Outside of Pamplona, the fishing trip to the Irati River (near Burguete in Navarre) was marred by polluted water.
Hemingway had intended to write a nonfiction book about bullfighting, but then decided that the week’s experiences had presented him with enough material for a novel. A few days after the fiesta ended, on his birthday (21 July), he began writing what would eventually become The Sun Also Rises. By 17 August, with 14 chapters written and a working title of Fiesta chosen, Hemingway returned to Paris. He finished the draft on 21 September 1925, writing a foreword the following weekend and changing the title to The Lost Generation.
A few months later, in December 1925, Hemingway and his wife spent the winter in Schruns, Austria, where he began revising the manuscript extensively. Pauline Pfeiffer joined them in January, and—against Hadley’s advice—urged him to sign a contract with Scribner’s. Hemingway left Austria for a quick trip to New York to meet with the publishers, and on his return, during a stop in Paris, began an affair with Pauline. He returned to Schruns to finish the revisions in March. In June, he was in Pamplona with both Richardson and Pfeiffer. On their return to Paris, Richardson asked for a separation, and left for the south of France. In August, alone and depressed in Paris, Hemingway considered suicide and drafted a last will, but he completed the proofs, dedicating the novel to his wife and son. After the publication of the book in October, Hadley asked for a divorce; Hemingway subsequently gave her the book’s royalties.
Publication history
Hemingway maneuvered his publisher Boni & Liveright into terminating their contract with him so that The Sun Also Rises could be published by Scribner’s instead. In December 1925, he quickly wrote The Torrents of Spring, a satirical novella parodying Sherwood Anderson’s novel Dark Laughter, and sent it to Boni & Liveright. His three-book contract with them included a termination clause should they reject a single submission. Unamused by the satire aimed at 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 5,090 copies, selling at $2.00 per copy. Cleo Damianakes illustrated the dust jacket with a Hellenistic design of a seated, robed woman, her head bent to her shoulder, eyes closed, one hand holding an apple, her shoulders and a thigh exposed. Editor Maxwell Perkins intended «Cleon’s respectably sexy» design to attract «the feminine readers who control the destinies of so many novels».
Two months later the book was in a second printing with 7,000 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 United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape, titled Fiesta, without the two epigraphs. 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.
By 1983, 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 the 1990s, British editions were titled Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises. In 2006, Simon & Schuster began to produce audiobook versions of Hemingway’s novels, including The Sun Also Rises. In May 2016, a new «Hemingway Library Edition» was published by Simon & Schuster, including early drafts, passages that were deleted from the final draft, and alternative titles for the book, which help to explain the author’s journey to produce the final version of the work.
Plot summary
On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée Lady Brett Ashley. Jake is an expatriate American journalist living in Paris, while Brett is a twice-divorced Englishwoman with bobbed hair and numerous love affairs, and embodies the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. Brett’s affair with Jake’s Princeton friend Robert Cohn (whom the characters often refer to by his last name) causes Jake to be upset and break off his friendship with Cohn; her seduction of the 19-year-old matador Romero causes Jake to lose his good reputation among the Spaniards in Pamplona.
Book One is set in the café society of young American expatriates in Paris. In the opening scenes, Jake plays tennis with Cohn, picks up a prostitute named Georgette, and runs into Brett and Count Mippipopolous in a nightclub. Later, Brett tells Jake she loves him, but they both know that they have no chance at a stable relationship.
In Book Two, Jake is joined by Bill Gorton, recently arrived from New York, and Brett’s fiancé Mike Campbell, who arrives from Scotland. Jake and Bill travel south and meet Cohn at Bayonne for a fishing trip in the hills northeast of Pamplona. Instead of fishing, Cohn stays in Pamplona to wait for the overdue Brett and Mike. Cohn had an affair with Brett a few weeks earlier and still feels possessive of her despite her engagement to Mike. After Jake and Bill enjoy five days of fishing the streams near Burguete, they rejoin the group in Pamplona.
All begin to drink heavily. Cohn is resented by the others, who taunt him with antisemitic remarks. During the fiesta, the characters drink, eat, watch the running of the bulls, attend bullfights, and bicker. Jake introduces Brett to the 19-year-old matador Romero at the Hotel Montoya; she is smitten with him and seduces him. The jealous tension among the men builds—Jake, Mike, Cohn, and Romero each want Brett. Cohn, who had been a champion boxer in college, has a fistfight with Jake and Mike, and another with Romero, whom he beats up. Despite his injuries, Romero continues to perform brilliantly in the bullring.
Book Three shows the characters in the aftermath of the fiesta. Sober again, they leave Pamplona; Bill returns to Paris, Mike stays in Bayonne, and Jake goes to San Sebastián on the northern coast of Spain. As Jake is about to return
