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Easton Press leather edition of Carlos Baker's "Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story," Volumes I and II, two COLLECTOR'S editions, Frontispiece portrait of Hemingway, Foreword by CHARLES SCRIBNER, III, one of the LIBRARY OF GREAT LIVES series, published in 1994. Bound in pea green leather, the books have camel tan French moire silk end leaves, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, satin book marker, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges---in FINE condition. Ernest Hemingway, who lived from 1899-1961, was born and grew up in Oak Forest, Illionois, the son of a medical doctor and a talented, musically trained mother. His father, Dr. Charles Edmonds Hemingway, took Ernest to the northern woods as soon as it was safe to travel and this became an annual ritual. Ernest loved the Petoskey area where he "played, ate, and slept with a passionate enjoyment." In 1911, Ernest and his sister Marcelline were confirmed in a ceremony at the Third Congregational Church where Grace, their mother, was the choir director and soloist. When Ernest was fourteen, he pitched a tent in Michigan behind the cottage and slept there all summer. One night, he and his friend Harold Sampson stayed up all night reading Bram Stoker's "Dracula" aloud before the cottage fireplace. At Oak Park High School in 1915, Ernest weighed 135, too light for football but in 1916, he began boxing and report writing, averaging a story a week. Many stories dealt with sports. College, war, and work were the choices that confronted him after high school graduation. Ernest chose work and moved to Kansas City and began writing for the STAR. In 1917, Ernest enlisted in the American Field Service and spent four months driving ambulances in France. He later arrived in Italy where again he drove ambulances. "Milan itself was busy and crowded with men in uniform. La Scala was open and there were daily races at the San Siro track." Ernest took turns at the wheel of a lumbering Fiat, a clumsy battleship gray with a large red cross of top. On July 8, Ernest was severely wounded. . .I heard somebody crying. I tried to move but I could not move. "I head the machine gun and rifles firing across the river." His legs felt as if he were wearing rubber boots filled with warm water. "He lay for two hours, waiting and praying. The little Florentine priest came along the line of wounded men, murmuring holy words, anointing each as he passed." In the Italian hospital, Ernest fell "in love" with his nurse, AGNES KUROWSKY, and their love affair would be written about in "A Farewell to Arms." For the first time in his life, he discovered that he was attractive to women. The nurses "liked to exhibit him to visitors as their prize specimen of a wounded hero." Most of his adolescent awkwardness was gone; he had become quite handsome and distinctively masculine with his hairy chest, chiseled pecs and abs, broad shoulders, good jaw, ruddy complexion and full head of dark hair. The older women adopted, mothered, and worshipped him while the younger women were aware of his sexuality. By the middle of August, Ernest was "wildly" in love with Agnes von Kurowsky. By September 11, Ernest could get around the streets of Milan with a cane or on crutches. Agnes informed him she would not be in Milano for their first Christmas. When Ernest returned to the U.S., his father and Marcelline met Ernest in Chicago. Within a month, Ernest was homesick for Italy. He received a letter from Agnes that she was working but moving on with her life. Ernest visited the Upper Península of Michigan, and this gave him the background for "Big Two-Hearted River," the story of Nick Adams on a long hiking-and-fishing expedition to recuperate from the effects of his wounding in the war. In 1920, Ernest met HADLEY RICHARSON, twenty-eight, a tall girl with auburn hair. Hadley was smitten with the "hulky, bulky, something masculine, Ernest Hemingway." Hadley thought he liked her for her "red hair, her skirt was a good length, and she played nicely on Doodles's piano." Despite the eight-year discrepancy in their ages, Ernest and Hadley married, living on the income from her trust fund when they decided to move to Paris where Ernest would write articles for the Toronto Star. Ernest "danced and sang, shadow-boxed and shouted" as he set forth on his second voyage to Europe. In Paris, he met Ezra Pound, Sylvia Beach, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and GERTRUDE STEIN. Ernest and Hadley enjoyed visiting Gertrude and her mate, Alice B. Toklas, in Gertrude's salon. Gertrude became the godmother to the Hemingway's first son, John (Bumby.) In Paris, Ernest and Hadley met Pauline Pfeiffer, a recent Missouri University journalism major who had arrived in Paris on assignment to write magazine articles. Within a few months, Pauline and Ernest had begun an affair and when Hadley confronted Ernest, he admitted the sexual affair but blamed Hadley for "bringing it out in the open." Ernest claimed to love both women. Ernest always said he never stopped loving Hadley and that she was a 'fine woman.' Hadley said if Ernest and Pauline would stay separate for six months and Ernest still wanted a divorce, she would agree. Pauline returned to her parents' home in PIGGOTT, ARKANSAS. She waited a few days to tell her mother that she planned to marry a man who had a wife and a small child. Mary Pfeiffer, a devout Catholic, is said to have "fainted." The Pfeiffers owned 60,000 acres of rich Arkansas farmland. Reluctantly, the Pfeiffers agreed to the marriage---but only because Ernest had his first marriage annulled. Hadley shared their son, Bumby, with Ernest and Jack spent most summers in the U.S., visiting the Pfeiffers in Arkansas with his brothers , Patrick and Gregory. Pauline devoted her life to Ernest, leaving the children with her Arkansas parents and following him to Wyoming and later to Africa on a safari. Pauline's wealthy Uncle Gus Pfeiffer doted on his niece and immediately like Ernest. Uncle Gus bought the KEY WEST, FLORIDA house, a new car, and put up $25,000 for the African safari. He also contributed toward the purchase of Hemingway's big boat, which he named PILAR, his pet name for Pauline. When he published "A Farewell to Arms" in 1930, he dedicated the book to GUS PFEIFFER. Ernest became legendary in Europe, Africa, Cuba, Piggott, Arkansas, and Key West for hunting, fishing, and drinking. Women "drooled" over him, and he boasted late in life that he "never met a woman he wanted to bed that he did not succeed." Volume one ends in the late 1930s---before Ernest divorced Pauline in 1940. Volume two covers Hemingway's life with Martha Gellhorn, his third wife, who once called Ernest "The Pig,"---her pet name before their marriage ended and he then married his fourth wife, Mary Welsh, who was 36 and had returned to London. In 1954 Hemingway published "The Old Man and the Sea," which was chosen for the "Book of the Month Club," the PULITZER PRIZE and later the NOBEL PRIZE. Life magazine sold 5,318, 650 copies within forty-eight hours. Ernest was at last financially set and the book was sold to Hollywood for a blockbuster film, starring Spencer Tracy as the 'old man.' The couple lived in Cuba, Key West, and in Ketchum, Idaho where on June 30th, 1961, Ernest shot himself with his double-barreled Boss shotgun. The two volumes have 695 pages, including Sources, Notes, Debts and Credit and an index. I offer Combined shipping.