Breaking Forelegs: Hemingway's Early Prefaces

Ernest Hemingway's unpublished preface to "The Lost Generation/A Novel" serves as a rehearsal for his later prefaces, including the "Introduction by the Author" for the first Scribner's printing of In Our Time (1930). The first is a botched attempt at a traditional preface to what would become The Sun Also Rises, while the other is an experiment designed to show readers rather than tell them what to expect in a new printing of his first collection. These prefaces are gateways to a young author's development, and we see a writer finding his footing in a business he would eventually term "the lousy racket."