Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms to be Republished With 47 Alternative Endings

Posted on July 8, 2012

The New York Times reports that Ernest Hemingway's novel, A Farewell to Arms, is being republished by Scribner. The novel will contain 47 alternative endings that Hemingway decided not to use. It will also include some early drafts of other passages in the novel. It also includes a new introduction by the author's grandson Sean Hemingway.

Hemingway told The Paris Review in an interview in 1958 that he re-wrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms 37 times. Hemingway said, "I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied."

The New York Times says there are actually 47 endings to the novel preserved in the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Hemingway clearly decided not to go with these endings, so it is not clear he would have wanted them published. However, it is very interesting from a literary perspective to be able to read all the endings he discarded.

The republished A Farewell to Arms edition with the alternative endings will be released on July 10th. It can be found here on Amazon.com.

Image: Simon & Schuster