In Our Time (short story collection)

In Our Time is Ernest Hemingway's first collection of short stories, published in 1925 by Boni & Liveright, New York. Its title is derived from the English Book of Common Prayer, "Give peace in our time, O Lord". The collection's publication history was complex. It began with six prose vignettes commissioned by Ezra Pound for a 1923 edition of The Little Review; Hemingway added twelve more and in 1924 compiled the in our time edition (with a lower-case title), which was printed in Paris. To these were added fourteen short stories for the 1925 edition, including "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River", two of his best-known Nick Adams stories. He composed "On the Quai at Smyrna" for the 1930 edition.

The stories' themes – of alienation, loss, grief, separation – continue the work Hemingway began with the vignettes, which include descriptions of acts of war, bullfighting and current events. The collection is known for its spare language and oblique depiction of emotion, through a style known as Hemingway's "theory of omission" (Iceberg Theory). According to his biographer Michael Reynolds, among Hemingway's canon, "none is more confusing ... for its several parts – biographical, literary, editorial, and bibliographical – contain so many contradictions that any analysis will be flawed."

Hemingway's writing style attracted attention, with literary critic Edmund Wilson saying it was "of the first destinction"; the 1925 edition of In Our Time is considered one of Hemingway's early masterpieces.

Hemingway was 19 years old when in 1918, shortly after he was posted to the Italian Front as a Red Cross ambulance driver, he sustained a severe wound from mortar fire. For the next six months, he recuperated in a Milan hospital, where he fell in love with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. Shortly after his return to the US, she informed him that she was engaged to an Italian officer. Soon after, he turned to journalism.

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