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 Of particular interest are unpublished documents related to the publication of the pamphlet from the Nancy Cunard archive at the University of Texas-Austin's Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities,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

In “Documents of Revolution” I compare various non-fiction prose genres with incipient journalistic media, including scrapbooks, photographs, films and radio poems, to explore the new internationalisms that emerged during the Spanish Civil War. Many studies of the war have prioritized visiting authors and their experience of travelling Spain. By contrast, I show how local critics, writers, and poets, such as the anarchist filmmaker Mateo Santos, the memoirist María Teresa León, and the poet Miguel Hernández, were crucial intermediaries between Spanish working-class oral cultures and foreign visiting authors, such as George Orwell, Nancy Cunard, Langston Hughes and Nicolás Guillén. I describe three modes of relation between intellectual elites and the working class: occupying, broadcasting, and archiving. By reading for the living internationalism of the working-class, I unearth various internationalisms (anarchist, Black Hispanophone, and feminist-humanitarian) that have not received due attention. These overlapping networks and diasporas ensured that the revolutionary and multimedia documentary poetics of the war disseminated far beyond Spain’s borders.