This typed, unsigned, undated letter from Ernest Hemingway to Harold Loeb was written between the publication of his collection of stories and first book, In Our Time, by the highbrow New York publisher Boni and Liveright, on October 5, 1925, and the first day of writing The Torrents of Spring (not mentioned in the letter) on November 20. He was then living in Paris at 119 rue Notre Dame des Champs with his wife, Hadley, and their two-year-old son, John, called Bumby. At the start of his literary career he was full of vitality and confidence.

Hemingway had spent the previous summer following the bullfights in Spain, most notably at the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, where he would set the major scenes of The Sun Also Rises (October 1926). In Pamplona he had nearly had a fist fight with Harold Loeb about Lady Duff Twysden, who would soon appear as Robert Cohn and Lady Brett Ashley in the novel. Infatuated with but not able to sleep with the woman he called an “alcoholic nymphomaniac,” Hemingway was furiously jealous of Loeb’s affair with Duff.

Loeb came from a wealthy New York family, was co-editor of the little magazine Broom and author of the novel Doodab (1925). He had been a good friend to Hemingway. He bought him food and wine, boxed and played tennis with him, defended him against charges of anti-Semitism and helped him publish In Our Time. On July 12, the day after their drunken quarrel in Spain, Hemingway (probably prompted by Hadley) made a rare abject apology: “I was terribly tight and nasty to you last night . . . but this is to let you know that I’m thoroly ashamed of the way I acted” (Selected Letters, NY, 1981, 166). In our unpublished letter, Hemingway attempts to maintain friendly relations with Loeb, who had returned to New York, reported on the reception and sales of In Our Time, and was an important link to their publisher, Boni and Liveright.

In our letter Hemingway invokes the authority of Scott Fitzgerald. The two writers had met in Paris in April 1925, two months after the publication by Scribner’s of Fitzgerald’s third novel, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was then writing for three million readers of the Saturday Evening Post while Hemingway was still publishing in little magazines. Though Fitzgerald was three years older and had gone to Princeton, achieved instant success with This Side of Paradise (1920), and helped Hemingway toward recognition, Hemingway became his heroic ideal and artistic rival.

Fitzgerald was instrumental in persuading Hemingway to leave Boni and Liveright and move to Scribner’s. Hemingway’s next book, The Torrents of Spring, wickedly satirized Dark Laughter (1925) by Sherwood Anderson, then at the height of his career and Boni’s best-selling author. Hemingway knew that if Boni rejected Torrents, which it did, he’d be free to follow Fitzgerald to Scribner’s. He would then obtain the benefits of a more commercially successful firm, an influential editor in Max Perkins, and a profitable outlet for his stories in Scribner’s Magazine. Scribner’s published The Torrents of Spring in May 1926 and The Sun Also Rises (started before, but completed after, Torrents) in October 1926, and Hemingway remained with the firm for the rest of his life.

In our letter Hemingway sympathizes with Loeb’s disappointment about Doodab. Writing to him as a friend and fellow author, he regrets that Boni (as Loeb confirmed) had not been doing enough (or anything at all) to sell In Our Time. Knowing that Loeb would pass his comments on to Boni, Hemingway puffs his current work—the story “Fifty Grand” and novel The Sun Also Rises—and mentions that Fitzgerald (in close touch with Scribner’s) thinks his fiction has excellent commercial prospects.

He asks about and mentions mutual friends, like John Dos Passos; says he’s been playing tennis and boxing (his opponents included Loeb, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and the Canadian novelist Morley Callaghan with Fitzgerald as incompetent timekeeper) as a therapeutic release from the pressures of writing. Returning to his complaint about Boni not selling his book, especially in his hometown, Chicago, Hemingway warns that they’d better pull up their socks if they want to keep him. He’s now a hot property. But he also insists, despite their failings, that they’re “damn good publishers.” Lack of money had been a serious problem since January 1924, when Hemingway gave up his job as foreign correspondent on the Toronto Star. At the same time, Hadley’s investments were mismanaged and her income reduced by half. He badly needed money to support his family and pay Bumby’s French nurse.

Hemingway was preparing to change wives as well as publishers. Living among Parisian expatriates and bohemians, he was becoming bored with Hadley and wanted a wife who was more than a “good sport.” After the birth of their child, it became increasingly obvious that the matronly Hadley was eight years older than him. He sounds an ominous note by telling Loeb that he’s “been seeing a lot of Pauline Pfeiffer,” who would soon replace Hadley and become his second wife. In A Moveable Feast (1964)—long after his divorce from Pauline—Hemingway expressed regret about his callous abandonment of Hadley, but unfairly blamed John Dos Passos and Gerald Murphy for the destruction of his first marriage. In October–November 1925, well aware of his formidable talent, Hemingway craved greater recognition and financial rewards.