Collecting Spanish Civil War literature

(Merci, Surbouquin)

An excerpt slightly  abbreviated, from Student Magazine issue (January 1963.) Quite prophetic as almost all the books mentioned in it are now valuable, especially the Orwell. Edmond Romilly's Boadilla is almost unobtainable as a first edition and copies of his scurrilous magazine Out of Bounds are thin on the ground. Frederick Grubb, who was a friend of radio pundit Fred Hunter -whose estate of books we bought, was a poet and literary critic much admired in the 1960s.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch

Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;

They floated over the oceans;

They walked the passes: they came to present their lives.

W.H. Auden: Spain.

As the 20th century has just about consisted of wars, you may ask: why pick on the Spanish Civil War as an occasion of literary interest? The reason is that, when the Spanish Fascists joined forces with the military-capitalist junta of General Franco in 1936 and rebelled against the Republic, two factors of major concern to artists and thinkers - the ‘individual’ and the ‘idea’ were given their last chance to prove themselves, in action, in this century.

The Spanish War was the last ideological conflict in modern history. It was fought about ideas.