The longer items in The Complete Works of George Orwell on the Spanish Civil War are included here, except for his abstracts from reports on the war taken from the Daily Worker and the News Chronicle in 1936–7 (Appendix 2 to Volume XI, 290–306, with full annotations) and the article (not by Orwell), ‘Night Attack on the Aragón Front’, New Leader, 30 April 1937 (366, XI/18–20), which displeased him. However, the memory of his time in Spain was never far from his mind and The Complete Works contains a number of passing references that might interest readers, especially in Volume XII. Thus, in his Diary for 13 June 1940, he believes a poster recruiting for the Pioneer Corps cribbed its idea from ‘a Government poster of the Spanish war’ (637, XII/183); in a letter to John Lehmann, founder and editor of New Writing, 6 July 1940, he says that the War Office no longer holds it against a man that he fought in the Spanish Civil War (653, XII/208); he thinks Hugh Slater’s Home Guard for Victory! relies ‘too much on the experience of the Civil War’ (768, XII/440), though some of his own lectures to the Home Guard are informed by that experience (730–35, XII/328–40); writing to American readers of Partisan Review, 15 April 1941, he tells them that ‘in our own [British] papers there is certainly nothing to compare with the frightful lies that were told on both sides in 1914–18 or in the Spanish civil war’ (787, XII/472), and there is a similar statement in ‘English Writing in Total War’, New Republic, 14 July 1941 (831, XII/527); a later letter to Partisan Review, 17 August 1941, remarks on a leavening of Home Guard recruits who are class-conscious factory-workers or the ‘handful of men who had fought in the Spanish civil war’ (843, XII/550). The Spanish Civil War was a point of reference for ‘The Prevention of Literature’ (e.g., 2792, XVII/373 and 374; and especially his claim that English intellectuals could not write sincerely about that experience but had to resort to ‘palpable lies’, XVII/376). Also in volume XVII, in ‘As I Please’, 54, 12 January 1945, Orwell compares with experience in Spain, the way ‘reputable British newspapers’ connived at ‘what amounted to forgery’ in order to discredit Draja Mihailovich, whom they had been backing a few months earlier (XVII/19). Orwell’s review of Freedom was Flesh and Blood by José Antonio de Aguirre, 19 July 1945 (2704, XVII/219–20) touches on the civil war. The Cumulative Index in Volume XX of CW will reveal more examples.
The principal source for this volume is The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Peter Davison, assisted by Ian Angus and Sheila Davison, 20 vols. (1998; 2nd, paperback, edn, from 2000). Reference might also usefully be made to The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 4 vol. (1968; Penguin, 1970).
Volumes of CW in which items will be found are as follows:
X 1–355 | XIV 1435–1915 | XVIII 2832–3143 |
XI 355A–582 | XV 1916–2377 | XIX 3144–3515 |
XII 583–843 | XVI 2378–2596 | XX 3516–3715A |
XIII 844–1434 | XVII 2597–2831 |
|
Vol. XX also includes in Appendix 15 the following supplementary items: 2278A, 2278B, 2420A, 2451A, 2563B, 2593A, 2625A, 3351A and 3715A. Each volume is indexed and vol. XX has a Cumulative Index, indexes of topics, and an index of serials in which Orwell’s work appeared.
There is a wealth of literature devoted to the Spanish Civil War, not all of it in agreement. The following might be found helpful and, in the main, conveniently available.
Victor Alba, ed., El Proceso del P.O.U.M.: Documentos Judiciales y Policiales (Barcelona, 1989); this gives (in Spanish) many documents associated with the Tribunal Especial, June 1937 to October 1938
Victor Alba and Stephen Schwartz, Spanish Marxism vs. Soviet Communism: A History of the POUM (1988)
Bill Alexander, British Volunteers for Liberty: Spain, 1936–1939 (1982)
Michael Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil War (1994)
Frederick R. Benson, Writers in Arms: The Literary Impact of the Spanish Civil War (1967)
Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution (1991)
Franz Borkenau, ‘Spain: Whose Victory?’, Observer, 27 March 1949, 4
Vincent Brome, The International Brigade (1965)
Tom Buchanan, ‘The Death of Bob Smillie, the Spanish Civil War, and the Eclipse of the Independent Labour Party’, Historical Journal, 40 (1997), 435–61
Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick, eds., Orwell Remembered (1984)
David Corkhill and Stewart Rawnsley, eds., The Road to Spain (1981)
Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life (1980; 3rd edn 1992)
Valentine Cunningham, ed., Spanish Civil War Verse (1980); with a long introduction by Cunningham
Peter Davison, George Orwell: A Literary Life (1996)
Rayner Heppenstall, Four Absentees (1960)
Katherine B. Hoskins, Today the Struggle: Literature and Politics in England during the Spanish Civil War (1969)
James Joll, The Anarchists (2nd edn, 1980)
Jeffrey Meyers, ed., George Orwell: The Critical Heritage (1975) —, Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation (2000)
John Newsinger, Orwell’s Politics (1999)
—, ‘The Death of Bob Smillie’, Historical Journal, 41 (1998), 575–8
Christopher Norris, ed., Inside the Myth: Orwell: Views from the Left (1984)
Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (1986)
Sir Richard Rees, For Love or Money (1960)
—, George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory (1961)
Patrick Reilly, George Orwell: The Age’s Adversary (1986)
John Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of ‘St George Orwell’ (1989)
William Rust, Britons in Spain: The History of the British Battalion of the XVth International Brigade (1939)
Michael Seidmann, ‘The Unorwellian Barcelona’, European History Quarterly, 20 (1990), 163–80
Michael Shelden, Orwell: The Authorised Biography (1991)
Ian Slater, Orwell: The Road to Airstrip One: The Development of George Orwell’s Political and Social Thought from Burmese Days to 1984 (1985)
Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, Orwell: The Transformation (1979)
Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (3rd edn, 1977; Penguin 1979)
Stephen Wadhams, ed., Remembering Orwell (1984)
George Woodcock, The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell (1967)
David Wykes, A Preface to Orwell (1987)
Alex Zwerdling, Orwell and the Left (1974)