To Have and Have Not on 15 October 1937 to a first edition print-run of approximately 10,000 copies. Cosmopolitan Magazine published a section of the novel as "One Trip Across" in 1934; Esquire Magazine published a section as "The Tradesman's Return" in 1936. The novel was adapted into a 1944 film, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The film, directed by Howard Hawks, changed the story's setting from Key West to Martinique under the Vichy regime, and made significant alterations to the plot, including getting rid of Hemingway's Marxist overtones, and turning the story into a romantic thriller centering on the sparks going on between
To Have and Have Not Key West and Cuba in the 1930s, and provides a social commentary on that time and place. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers describes the novel as heavily influenced by the Marxist ideology Hemingway was exposed to by his support of the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War while he was writing it. The work got a mixed critical reception. The novel had its origins in two short stories published earlier in periodicals by Hemingway ("One Trip Across" and "The Tradesman's Return") which make up the opening chapters, and a novella, written later, which makes up about two-thirds of the book.