![The Nobel Prize-winning writer’s novels now come with a warning](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/06/24/TELEMMGLPICT000340260009_16876145535580_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqwyqXTucPNlkkJDvSD9JpyWiQO4tjuXlv9QQ9Re0H-9k.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Ernest Hemingway masterpiece given a trigger warning by publisher
Biographer says Penguin's new cautionary note treats readers ‘with stupidity’
![The Nobel Prize-winning writer’s novels now come with a warning](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/06/24/TELEMMGLPICT000340260009_16876145535580_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqwyqXTucPNlkkJDvSD9JpyWiQO4tjuXlv9QQ9Re0H-9k.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Ernest Hemingway’s work has been given a trigger warning by publishers over concerns about his “language” and “attitudes”, the Telegraph can reveal.
The Nobel Prize-winning writer’s novels and short stories have been reissued by Penguin Random House with a new cautionary note.
Would-be readers of Hemingway are now warned about the “language” and “attitudes” contained in his writing, and alerted to the novelist’s “cultural representations”.
A disclaimer printed in the latest edition of his debut novel The Sun Also Rises - considered among the greats of the 20th century - states that publishers decided not to censor the book, but makes clear that this does not constitute an “endorsement” of Hemingway’s original text.
The decision to add a disclaimer to the works of the Nobel Prize-winner has raised concerns that classics of English literature are being treated like “cigarette packets” in need of health warnings.
![The front cover of the great writer's debut novel](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/06/24/TELEMMGLPICT000340487514_16876146466790_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqwT2OqHf9jRufxqLgjsnLDWQnZJIETfWB_fUbKb77n0w.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The note added to the latest edition of The Sun Also Rises warns readers: “This book was published in 1926 and reflects the attitudes of its time.”
It adds: “The publisher’s decision to present it as it was originally published is not intended as an endorsement of cultural representations or language contained herein.”
Hemingway’s collection of short stories, Men Without Women, now carries an almost identical warning, differing only by alerting would-be readers to the fact that the book was originally published in 1927.
The books were reissued in 2022 and 2023 by the Penguin Random House imprint Vintage, which has not cited any specific contentious content in the texts.
The Sun Also Rises is considered by some to be Hemignway’s best work, and follows a coterie of “Lost Generation” American expats in Paris in the 1920s. They travel to the bullfighting in Pamplona while dealing with romantic jealousy within their group.
The novel, based directly on one of Hemingway’s own trips to Spain with compatriots, explores the new spirit of the age, sexuality, violence and the “tough guy” author’s view of masculinity.
His follow-up story collection, Men Without Women, contains tales on subjects from Hemingway’s passions of bullfighting, skiing and boxing, to abortion, drug-use and war.
![A screenshot from the 1957 movie of The Sun Also Rises](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/06/24/TELEMMGLPICT000340261077_16876147807410_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqJy-4eDm4cLIGc8dIkBH1A3QQcXncdCiy8eLG13Uhkv4.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The marking of the new editions of the Nobel Prize-winner’s work has been branded “alarming” and “stupid” by Heminway experts, and likened to tobacco companies putting health warnings on cigarette packs.
Prof Richard Bradford, author of the 2018 Hemingway biography The Man Who Wasn’t There, told the Telegraph: “The publisher’s comments would be hilarious, were they not also alarming.
“They state that despite reprinting the book unaltered they do not wish to endorse the ‘cultural representations or language contained herein’.
“This would be understandable had they brought out a new translation of Mein Kampf.
“They seem to imply that, because it’s a literary classic, they’re willing to take a deep breath and warn readers with delicate sensibilities that something in it might unsettle them.
“Scrutinise any novel or poem written at any time, and search for a passage that could create unease for persons who are obsessed with themselves, and you’ll find one.
“And then every publication will need to carry a warning like this, the verbal equivalent of photos of cancer ridden lungs which now decorate cigarette packets.
“Publishers and the literary establishment as a whole now seem to be informed by a blend of stupidity and bullying regarding what readers should be allowed to think.”
Printing trigger warnings
The hard-drinking Hemingway, who lived from 1899 until his suicide in 1961, became known as one of the “Lost Generation” writers in 1920s Paris, and his works draw from his experiences hunting in Africa, covering the Spanish Civil War and fishing in Key West.
Vintage has not confirmed whether further new editions of Hemingway’s writings, a body of work which includes For Whom the Bell Tolls and the Nobel-commended The Old Man And the Sea, will be marked with a blanket trigger warning for including the “attitudes of their time”.
The practice of publishers printing trigger warnings in novels they believe may be potentially offensive or upsetting is a new one, which has been recently been applied by Penguin to the world of PG Wodehouse, whose comic novels have also been edited.
The Telegraph recently revealed that Iam Fleming’s James Bond novels had also been edited to remove potentially offensive passages, by Fleming Publications Ltd, and that the mysteries of Agatha Christie had been purged of potentially upsetting passages by Harper Collins.
Vintage has been contacted for comment.