The bell tolls for Hemingway as publisher adds trigger warnings

ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S work has been given a trigger warning by publishers over concerns about his “language and attitudes”, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

The Nobel Prize-winner’s novels and short stories have been reissued by Penguin Random House with a cautionary note alerting readers to the novelist’s “cultural representations”.

A disclaimer in the latest edition of his debut novel The Sun Also Rises warns: “This book was published in 1926 and reflects the attitudes of its time. 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, carries an almost identical warning, differing only in the year the text was published.

The books were reissued last year and this year by the Penguin Random House imprint Vintage, which has not cited any specific contentious content.

The move has raised concerns that literary classics are being treated like “cigarette packets” in need of health warnings.

The Sun Also Rises is considered by some to be Hemingway’s best work, and follows a coterie of “Lost Generation” American expats in 1920s Paris who travel to the bullfighting in Pamplona.

The novel, based on Hemingway’s own trip to Spain with compatriots, explores the new spirit of the age, sexuality, violence, and the “tough guy” author’s view of masculinity.

Men Without Women has themes ranging from bullfighting, skiing and boxing to abortion, drug use and war.

The warnings have been branded “alarming” and “stupid” by Hemingway experts.

Prof Richard Bradford, author of the 2018 biography The Man Who Wasn’t There, said: “The publisher’s comments would be hilarious, were they not also alarming. 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.”

Vintage has not confirmed whether further new editions of Hemingway’s writings will be marked with a blanket trigger warning for 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 applied by Penguin to the works of PG Wodehouse.

Vintage has been contacted for comment.