Hemingway: Eight Decades of Criticism is part of a collection of essays edited by Linda Wagner-Martin, in this series that has become an essential guide to the best contemporary criticism regarding the work (and life) of Ernest Hemingway.
     Several of the essays discuss Hemingway's life, including the first, which focuses on his own wounding in World War I. Other contributors examine 'wounding' of many kinds—guilt, disability, loss, and mourning—in his works. Another section collects essays that pursue arguments centered on issues of gender. Most are written by scholars whose work has not appeared in previous collections. Throughout this collection, studies of familiar texts appear in tandem with fresh research, including essays that have become 'instant' classics during the last decade and essays that focus new attention on The Old Man and the Sea. Anyone who is seriously interested in Hemingway's work will find this collection to be essential reading.

• This new edition features a new introduction and explanatory notes and reset text

Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers—and to the many who revisit them again and again.'

Once again Linda Wagner-Martin has selected an important collection of essays that cover some of the more interesting dimensions of Ernest Hemingway's fiction. Although the book opens with pieces from the 1920s by D.H. Lawrence and Gertrude Stein, it emphasizes criticism written during the past decade. In the 1980s and 1990s, Hemingway's fiction has sparked a renaissance of attention and critics have moved with alacrity beyond their earlier appreciation of Hemingway's style, economy, and grace. 
     A retrospective look at criticism that appeared soon after the author's suicide shows a collection of writing that — from the perspective of the 1990s — seems hesitant. If Hemingway himself seemed to fault his life's work, perhaps the previously acknowledged brilliance of his writing might be called into question. Essays of the 1960s and 1970s dealt with small issues, close readings, and limited concerns. But, as the nature of the critical enterprise changed, so too did the kind of criticism devoted to Hemingway's words. Much of this collection presents the Hemingway oeuvre as culturally provocative, especially on the questions of gender, sexuality, and race; and, for the first time in the 'decades' series, a great many of the essays have been written by women scholars.