The history of the Civil War that is taught to Catalan schoolchildren now includes Orwell, and has been wiped clean of any totalitarian or revisionist taint. Truth, it turns out, is great after all, and can prevail. The book you hold in your hands is a modest, individual illustration of that mighty proposition, which will always stand in need of volunteers to vindicate it.

Christopher Hitchens
Palo Alto, California
May Day, 2000

* These documents, and many others of extraordinary interest, were disclosed as a consequence of an exclusive agreement between the State Military Archive and Yale University Press. They will appear in full in Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union and the Spanish Civil War by Ronald Radosh and Mary R. Habeck (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001). In view of the fact that I have disagreed strongly in print and in public with Professor Radosh, for his published views on the Spanish conflict, I should like to emphasize the unusual courtesy he showed in sharing his findings with me.

Editorial Note

In the main, the items reproduced here are given in the chronological order in which they were written or published. However, the order of events is sometimes better represented by not following this practice. It will be obvious, from dates and item numbers, where the chronological order has not been followed. Letters are typewritten unless stated otherwise. The titles used for Orwell’s essays and articles are not always his own but this distinction is not noted unless there is a special reason to do so.

Almost all the items are drawn from The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Peter Davison, assisted by Ian Angus and Sheila Davison (Secker & Warburg, 1998). Some explanatory headnotes and many footnotes have been added, amplified and modified. The Complete Works did not provide biographical notes of authors of books reviewed but, for this selection, these have been added if the author had a link with Orwell or if they might illuminate the context of Orwell’s review. Item numbers from the original edition are given in italics within square parentheses, and a list of volumes in which these items can be found is given in the Further Reading.

Where the text was in some way obscure, the original edition does not modify but marks the word or passage with a superior degree sign (°); in most instances such passages have been silently corrected in this edition but in a few instances the degree sign has been retained, for example, where one of Orwell’s idiosyncratic spellings occurs: e.g., ‘agressive’ or ‘adress’.

References to items in the Complete Works are generally given by volume, forward slash and item number in italic: e.g.: XV/953; page references to CW are given similarly except that the page number is in roman: XII/387; page references to this present volume are given as ‘p. 57’; references are also made to the companion three volumes: Orwell and Politics, Orwell and the Dispossessed and Orwell’s England. References to Homage to Catalonia are given to this edition by page and, within square brackets, by the CW volume number (VI) and page (the page numbers in CW and Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics are identical for the text): e.g.: p. 36 [VI/57].)

The following works are designated by abbreviated forms:

Complete Works and CW: The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Peter Davison assisted by Ian Angus and Sheila Davison, 20 vols. (1998); volume numbers are given in roman numerals, I to XX. Vols. X–XX of a second, enlarged and amended, edition are being published in paperback from September 2000.

CEJL: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 4 vols. (1968; paperback, 1970)

Crick: Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life (1980; 3rd edn, 1992)

A Literary Life: P. Davison, George Orwell: A Literary Life (1996)

Orwell Remembered: Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick, eds., Orwell Remembered (1984)

Remembering Orwell: Stephen Wadhams, ed., Remembering Orwell (1984)

S&A, Unknown Orwell: Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, The Unknown Orwell (1972)

S&A, Transformation: Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, Orwell: The Transformation (1979)

Shelden: Michael Shelden, Orwell: The Authorised Biography (1991)

The Thirties: Malcolm Muggeridge, The Thirties (1940; 1971); reviewed by Orwell, XII/615

Thomas: Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (rev. edn, 1977; Penguin, 1979)

A fuller reading list is given in Further Reading.

Peter Davison,
De Montfort University, Leicester

Acknowledgements

George Orwell’s (Eric Blair’s) work is the copyright of the Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell. Most of the documents in this edition are held by the Orwell Archive (founded by Sonia Orwell in 1960) at University College London. Gratitude is expressed to the Archive, and particularly its Archivist, Gill Furlong, for the help given the editor. A number of documents are in the possession of others and thanks to the following are gratefully extended: Archivo Histórico Nacional de España, Madrid, for the Spanish originals of the documents referring to Orwell (Blair) and Doran (374A); the BBC for the paragraph from the Weekly News Broadcast to India, 22 (1173); the British Library for Mss Add. 49384 (Kopp’s report on Orwell’s wound, 369); Mrs Bertha Doran and Waverley Secondary School, Drumchapel, Glasgow, for 386; the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, for 358 and 365; Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, for 381 and 434; and Judith Williams for 386A.

Headnotes, footnotes and the Note on the Text of Homage to Catalonia are copyright of Peter Davison.

I wish to add a last acknowledgement to this, my favourite of Orwell’s books. Sheila, my wife for over fifty years, has been of inestimable help in the production of this and the other three volumes in this series, Orwell and the Dispossessed, Orwell and Politics and Orwell’s England. Her eyes, much sharper than mine, have spotted many errors in the course of proof-reading, and she has endeavoured to ensure I have written simply and straightforwardly. For this and so much else I am abidingly grateful.

Orwell’s Journey to Spain, December 1936

The Spanish Civil War was fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Spanish Republican Government and Nationalist rebels. The Republicans included socialists, communists, anarchists and Catalan and Basque nationalists, but also many moderates; the Nationalists comprised the conservative elements of Spain, including monarchists, Carlists, Falangists (fascists) and the Roman Catholic Church.