No twentieth-century writer had greater influence on American fiction than Ernest Hemingway. This volume, the second in Library of America’s definitive edition of Hemingway’s works, brings together Men Without Women, A Farewell to Arms, and Death in the Afternoon, the three books that followed his groundbreaking debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, and solidified his status as a preeminent literary modernist.

The appearance of Men Without Women (1927) confirmed Hemingway’s determination to leave his mark on the short story form. It comprises fourteen spare and unsparing stories about wounded soldiers, boxers, and bullfighters, each displaying the extraordinary economy of language that is the hallmark of his prose. Among them are such indelible masterpieces as “The Undefeated,” about an aging torero who returns to the ring for one last corrida , the taboo-shattering “Hills Like White Elephants,” and the existential Prohibition-era hitman drama “The Killers.”

Hemingway’s second novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), his great saga of love and war, was hailed by critics and won him the large popular readership he sought. It is presented here in a newly prepared text that fixes numerous errors introduced by typists, including dropped lines of dialogue and the incorrect sequencing of two paragraphs. It also reinstates language deemed offensive at the time that was softened or removed against Hemingway’s wishes.

In Death in the Afternoon (1932), a grand illustrated meditation on bullfighting, mortality, and writing, Hemingway articulates his famous “iceberg” theory of fiction: “The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” For this deluxe edition, all eighty-one of the book’s photographs of bullfights and bullfighters are reproduced from the original prints and postcards gathered by the author, bringing them vividly to life as never before.

Rounding out the volume is a selection of letters to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, and his friends F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Dos Passos, among others, that casts light on Hemingway’s life, art, and publishing activities during this remarkably creative and productive period. A biographical chronology and explanatory notes offer invaluable context for understanding the author’s many allusions to real persons and events.

Robert W. Trogdon, editor, is professor of English at Kent State University. A scholar of twentieth-century American literature and textual editing, he has published extensively on the writings of Ernest Hemingway and served as an editor for The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway.