Charles Scribner's Sons

Charles Scribner's Sons enters the account at a decisive point in the making of The Sun Also Rises: Hemingway took the draft to New York to show it to Max Perkins, then returned to Schruns to finish revising it. The firm is presented as the manuscript's eventual destination, while the creative work itself remains under Hemingway's control until the revision is complete.

Identity and Role

The memoir names Charles Scribner's Sons in connection with Max Perkins and the submission of Hemingway's novel. Its role in the passages is specific rather than institutional: Hemingway shows Perkins the manuscript during his work on it, and later sends the completed, rewritten version to the firm. The account offers no further description of the publisher's organization or its wider business.

The Manuscript's Route

The novel's path to the publisher followed a difficult history of lost work and renewed effort. Hemingway recalls that an earlier novel had been among the manuscripts stolen from Hadley's suitcase at the Gare de Lyon. He regarded that loss as possibly beneficial, but still knew he needed to write a novel; rather than begin one merely because it was necessary, he waited until the pressure to do so became unavoidable.

The first draft of The Sun Also Rises came in a six-week sprint. In the fall of 1925, as he and F. Scott Fitzgerald prepared to go to Schruns after the first snowfall, Fitzgerald was anxious to see the draft, but Hemingway declined to show it before rewriting. During the winter of 1925–26, he rewrote the first half in Schruns, took the manuscript to New York and showed it to Max Perkins of Charles Scribner's Sons, then returned to Schruns to complete the revision.

Submission and Access

Hemingway did not let Fitzgerald read the manuscript while the revision was underway. He explained that the draft would mean little until he had gone over and rewritten it, and that he did not want to discuss it or show it to anyone first. Fitzgerald saw the book only after the completed, rewritten and cut manuscript had been sent to Charles Scribner's Sons at the end of April. The sequence distinguishes Perkins's early look at a working manuscript from Fitzgerald's later access to the finished revision.

Place in the Memoir

The publisher's appearance marks a transition from private composition to delivery of a finished manuscript, but the account does not describe editorial decisions, a contract, or the book's publication. Its emphasis remains on the labor preceding submission: Hemingway calls the rewriting at Schruns the most difficult job of rewriting he had ever done, and remembers that several stories written there also turned out well. Charles Scribner's Sons therefore figures as the recipient at the far end of a creative process shaped by earlier loss, deliberate withholding, and extensive revision.