On 5 July 1937, Victor Gollancz wrote to Orwell to say that, though he could not be sure until he had seen the typescript, he thought it probable that he would not wish to publish Homage to Catalonia, upon which Orwell was already engaged. Although not a Communist, he felt he should never publish anything ‘which could harm the fight against fascism’. He did see the irony of rejecting an account by someone who had been on the spot while he had sat quietly in his office. He hoped Orwell would continue to regard Gollancz as his main publisher. In fact this, and the later rejection of Animal Farm (published 1945), led to Orwell’s break with Gollancz and his publisher became Martin Secker & Warburg. On the following day, 6 July, Fredric Warburg wrote to Orwell to tell him that two ILP members, John Aplin and Reginald Reynolds (the latter of whom became a good friend), had suggested that Orwell’s proposed book ‘would not only be of great interest but of considerable political importance’. He asked Orwell to discuss the book with him. On 17 July, Orwell wrote to his agent, Leonard Moore, enclosing ‘a sort of rough plan of my book on Spain’ which he thought might be of use to Secker’s. He was making a more detailed plan and ‘no doubt it will be done by Christmas, but I am not going to hurry it’. Orwell told Moore on 6 December that he had finished the rough draft and begun revising and that it should be finished by the middle of January (412). In mid-February, 1938, he supplied Moore with a carbon copy of the typescript (425). On 25 April 1938, Martin Secker & Warburg published 1,500 copies of Homage to Catalonia. (See 375, 377; for publication details and some account of reviews of the book, see 438.)