Background and publication thumb|left|alt=Photograph of a man reclining on a chair on a porch, smiling at the camera and holding a drink. |Hemingway at the Finca Vigía, his Cuban residence where he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, in 1946. The Old Man and the Sea was Ernest Hemingway's sixth major novel, following The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), To Have and Have Not (1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and Across the River and Into the Trees (1950). Although the latter, published on September 7, sold 75,000 copies in its first month and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for twenty-one weeks, critical reception was largely negative. Amid a breakdown in marital relations with his wife Mary, Hemingway fell deeper into love with his muse, the young Italian Adriana Ivancich, who spent the winter of 1950–51 in the Hemingways' company in Cuba. Suddenly finding himself able to write in early December, he completed one book (published in 1970 as Islands in the Stream) of a planned "sea trilogy", and, as his passion for Ivancich cooled, set about writing another story.
Background and publication thumb|left|alt=Photograph of a man reclining on a chair on a porch, smiling at the camera and holding a drink. |Hemingway at the Finca Vigía, his Cuban residence where he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, in 1946. The Old Man and t,he Sea was Ernest Hemingway's sixth major novel, following The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), To Have and Have Not (1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and Across the River and Into, the Trees (1950). Although the latter, published on September 7, sold 75,000 copies in its first month and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for twenty-one weeks, critical reception was largely negative. Amid a breakdown in marital relations with his wife Mary Hemingway fell deeper into love with his muse, the young Italian Adriana Ivancich who spent the winter of 1950–51 in the Hemingways' company in Cuba. Suddenly finding himself able to write in early December, he completed one book (published in 1970 as Islands in the Stream) of a planned "sea trilogy", and, as his passion for Ivancich cooled, set about writing another story.