The signed and inscribed books in this collection—a mix of titles by Ernest Hemingway and other authors—were gifts from Hemingway to his cousin, Ruth White Lowry. Three of the authors represented in the collection are major early 20th century writers who influenced Hemingway on his path to becoming a major writer himself: T. S. Eliot (Poems), D. H. Lawrence (Sea and Sardinia), and W. Somerset Maugham (Cakes and Ale and Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular). The copies of Sea and Sardinia and Cakes and Ale are particular standouts, as they feature inscriptions by Hemingway that include his own critical assessments of the authors. Other highlights of the collection include inscribed copies of his own books, including a first printing of Men Without Women, Green Hills of Africa in a first issue dust jacket, and the first German translation of A Farewell to Arms; and an inscribed copy of Ellen Terry and George Bernard Shaw, A Correspondence, which was also formerly owned by Hemingway’s bibliographer, Captain Louis Henry Cohn. Emma Ruth White Lowry (October 30, 1884 - May 30, 1974) was Ernest Hemingway’s cousin and the half-sister of his aunt Arabell Hemingway (née White). Ruth was married to William Malcolm Lowry, and the couple lived near Arabell in Mission Hills, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. In 1928 and 1931, Ernest and his wife Pauline stayed at the Lowrys’ home for the births of their children, Patrick and Gloria Hemingway. Notably, Ernest wrote a significant portion of A Farewell to Arms during his stay at the Lowrys’ in 1928, in the time leading up to Patrick’s birth [he noted “From page 156 to page 260 written in her house” in another inscribed copy of Farewell (not part of this collection)]. It is widely held that Pauline’s eighteen-hour cesarean birth of Patrick was the model for Catherine Barkley’s tragic childbirth in Farewell. A few of the books in this collection (Men Without Women, Sea and Sardinia, Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular, and My Diaries) have bookseller tickets or bookmarks from Fred Harvey or Bennett Schneider. Both were landmark Kansas City bookstores; Bennett Schneider opened in 1929, and regular customers included Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, and André Maurois. It is likely that Hemingway purchased many of these books locally for Ruth while he was visiting her in Kansas City.