The editors of Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War, which was published in London by the Left Review in 1937, posed two questions to a list of writers: "Are you for, or against, the legal Government and the People of Republican Spain? Are you for, or against, Franco and Fascism?" The question was distributed by mail to hundreds of writers in the United Kingdom to solicit responses for publication. The editors' appeal closes: "We wish the world to know what you, writers and poets, who are amongst the most sensitive instruments of a nation, feel." Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War consists of brief remarks from 148 contributors in a "10,000 word" pamphlet. Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War contains many influential writers' opinions on one of the most significant conflicts of the twentieth century, but the publication has since received almost no editorial attention. The pamphlet was reissued in 2001 as a photoduplication of the original--without commentary or annotation--and due to a printer's error, it is missing two leaves. This annotated edition of Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War includes an archive of related correspondence, articles, and other writings pertinent to the pamphlet and the political, social, and cultural climate of Europe around the Spanish Civil War. Of particular interest are unpublished documents related to the publication of the pamphlet from the Nancy Cunard archive at the University of Texas-Austin's Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities, as well as an examination of textual decisions and revisions within the work of Arthur Koestler and six other authors who wrote on the Spanish Civil War. It is in this way that this edition of Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War also takes on many of the qualities of a dossier in that it brings together documentary evidence of a certain kind to provide a range of perspectives on this cultural and historical moment. / 2016-11-01T00:00:00Z

This thesis analyses processes of discursive European identity formation in three cultural journals: Esprit, from France, the British New Left Review and the German Merkur during the time periods 1989-92, and, a decade later, during 2003-06. The theoretical framework which the thesis brings to bear on this analysis is that of the European Public Sphere. This model builds on Jürgen Habermas’s original model of a “public sphere”, and alleges that a sphere of common debate about issues of European concern can lead to a more defined and integrated sense of a European identity which is widely perceived as vague and inchoate. The relevancy of the public sphere model and its connection to the larger debate about European identity, especially since 1989, are discussed in the first part of the thesis. The second part provides a comparative analysis of the main European debates in the journals during the respective time periods. It outlines the mechanisms by which identity is expressed and assesses when, and to what extent, shared notions of European identity emerge. The analysis finds that identity formation does not occur through a developmental, gradual convergence of views as the European public sphere model envisages. Rather, it is brought about in much more haphazard back-and-forth movements. Moreover, shared notions of European identity between all the journals only arise in moments of perceived crises. Such crises are identified as the most salient factor which galvanizes expressions of a common, shared sense of European identity across national boundaries and ideological cleavages. The thesis concludes that the model of the EPS is too dependent on a partial view of how identity formation occurs and should thus adopt a more nuanced understanding about the complex factors that are at play in these processes. For the principled attempt to circumscribe identity formation as the outcome of communicative processes alone is likely to be thwarted by external events.