When In Our Time was published in 1925, it was praised by Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions. It earned Hemingway a place beside Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein as the most promising American writers of the period.In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories "Indian Camp", "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife", "The Three Day Blow", and "The Battler". It also introduces listeners to the hallmarks of the Hemingway style: a lean, tough prose, enlivened by an ear for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic that suggests, through the simplest of statements, a sense of moral value and a clarity of heart.
Now recognized as one of the most original short-story collections in 20th-century literature, In Our Time also provides a key to Hemingway's later works.