"For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1940. First Edition, First Printing: the title page and copyright page are both dated 1940 with the Scribner's "A" marking the 1st printing on the copyright page.

Facsimile of the first printing dust jacket in the mylar cover, hard boards, original publisher's plain beige cloth with Hemingway's signature on the front board, red box with black lettering on spine [some wear and soiling: see photos], 5.3/4" x 8.1/2"; ink written name ["Lee Mason Clyde"] on the top edge of the front endpaper, 471 pages, cream-color paper, very good condition.

The novel is regarded as one of Hemingway's best works, along with The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea.

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. The novel tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia...

It was published just after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), whose general lines were well known at the time. It assumes the reader knows that the war was between the government of the Second Spanish Republic, which many foreigners went to Spain to help and which was supported by the Soviet Union, and the Nationalist faction, which was supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It was commonly viewed as the dress rehearsal for the Second World War. In 1940, the year the book was published, the United States had not yet entered the war, which had begun on September 1, 1939, with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland.

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