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Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Brand Page
  3. Orwell in Spain
  4. Orwell in Spain
  5. Introduction
  6. Editorial Note
  7. Acknowledgements
  8. Orwell’s Journey to Spain, December 1936
  9. Extract from ‘As I Please’, 42 [The Journey to Spain]
  10. Jennie Lee to Margaret M. Goalby, 23 June 1950: Orwell’s Arrival in Barcelona
  11. Orwell in Spain, December 1936
  12. Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
  13. ‘British Author with the Militia’
  14. Eileen Blair to her mother
  15. To Eileen Blair
  16. Extract from letter from Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
  17. Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
  18. Extract from letter to Victor Gollancz
  19. Orwell’s Wound
  20. To Cyril Connolly
  21. Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
  22. Escape from Spain
  23. BARCELONA 13TH JULY, 1937
  24. Charles Doran
  25. Homage to Catalonia
  26. X
  27. ‘Spilling the Spanish Beans’
  28. Eileen Blair to John McNair
  29. George Kopp to Dr Laurence O’Shaughnessy
  30. Translation of letter written in Spanish by George Kopp to Lieutenant-Colonel Burillo,7 Chief of Police, Barcelona
  31. George Kopp to Eileen Blair
  32. Review of The Spanish Cockpit by Franz Borkenau; Volunteer in Spain by John Sommerfield
  33. To Rayner Heppenstall
  34. ‘Eye-Witness in Barcelona’
  35. Abstracts of Reports on the Spanish Civil War in the Daily Worker and News Chronicle, 1936–7
  36. To Amy Charlesworth
  37. To Charles Doran
  38. Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War
  39. To Geoffrey Gorer
  40. Review of Red Spanish Notebook by Mary Low and Juan Brea; Heroes of the Alcazar by R. Timmermans; Spanish Circus by Martin Armstrong
  41. To H. N. Brailsford
  42. Review of Storm Over Spain by Mairin Mitchell; Spanish Rehearsal by Arnold Lunn; Catalonia Infelix by E. Allison Peers; Wars of Ideas in Spain by Josée Castillejo; Invertebrate Spain by Josée Ortega y Gasset
  43. H. N. Brailsford to Orwell
  44. To H. N. Brailsford
  45. Review of The Tree of Gernika by G. L. Steer; Spanish Testament by Arthur Koestler
  46. To the Editor, Time and Tide
  47. To Raymond Mortimer
  48. To Stephen Spender
  49. To Geoffrey Gorer
  50. ‘Notes* on the Spanish Militias
  51. To the Editor, The Times Literary Supplement
  52. Sir Richard Rees to Orwell
  53. To the Editor, The Listener
  54. Review of Spain’s Ordeal1 by Robert Sencourt; Franco’s Rule [anonymous]
  55. Review of The Civil War in Spain by Frank Jellinek1
  56. Review of Searchlight on Spain by the Duchess of Atholl1
  57. To the Editor, Manchester Guardian
  58. To Yvonne Davet
  59. To Raymond Postgate
  60. Orwell made two copies of this summary of the article in La Flèche of 14 October 1938, by L.-P. Foucaud.
  61. Review of The Church in Spain, 1737-1937 by E. Allison Peers; Crusade in Spain by Eoin O’Dujfy1
  62. To Frank Jellinek
  63. ‘Release of George Kopp’
  64. ‘Caesarean Section in Spain
  65. To Yvonne Davet
  66. Review of Hotel in Flight by Nancy Johnstone
  67. Review of The Last Days of Madrid by S. Casado, translated by Rupert Croft-Cooke; Behind the Battle by T. C. Worsley
  68. Review of The Spanish Dilemma by E. Allison Peers; A Key to Victory: Spain by Charles Duff
  69. Extract from War-time Diary
  70. Review of The Forge by Arturo Barea,1 translated and with an introduction by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell2
  71. Extract from letter to Partisan Review
  72. Extract from BBC Weekly News Review for India, 22 [Comparison with the Spanish Civil War]
  73. ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’ [1942?]
  74. Proposed BBC Broadcast on the Spanish Civil War
  75. Review of Spain in Eclipse, 1937–1943 by E. Allison Peers; Behind the Spanish Mask by Lawrence Dundas
  76. Extract from ‘As I Please’, 10 [How the lie becomes truth]
  77. ‘The Eight Years of War: Spanish Memories’
  78. Review of An Interlude in Spain by Charles d’Ydewalle, translated by Eric Sutton
  79. Review of The Clash by Arturo Barea1
  80. Orwell’s Pamphlet Collection
  81. A summary of letters from and to David Astor, 4 and 5
  82. Further Reading

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