Spain in Mind: An Anthology

This spellbinding literary travel guide gathers poetry, nonfiction, and fiction about Spain by forty English and American writers.

Here are letters and memoirs from Lord Byron, Edith Wharton, and Henry James; a poem about Picasso by E. E. Cummings; and a comic tale by Anthony Trollope in which two Englishmen mistake a Spanish duke for a bullfighter. W. H. Auden, George Orwell, and Langston Hughes record their experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Ernest Hemingway takes on bullfighting, Richard Wright is beguiled by gypsy flamenco dancers, and Calvin Trillin pursues an obsession with Spanish peppers. From Chris Stewart’s memoir of his rural retreat in Driving Over Lemons to Barbara Kingsolver’s idyllic portrait of the Canary Islands in “Where the Map Stopped,” the glimpses of another world in Spain in Mind will enchant you.

This spellbinding literary travel guide gathers poetry, nonfiction, and fiction about Spain by forty English and American writers.

Here are letters and memoirs from Lord Byron, Edith Wharton, and Henry James; a poem about Picasso by E. E. Cummings; and a comic tale by Anthony Trollope in which two Englishmen mistake a Spanish duke for a bullfighter. W. H. Auden, George Orwell, and Langston Hughes record their experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Ernest Hemingway takes on bullfighting, Richard Wright is beguiled by gypsy flamenco dancers, and Calvin Trillin pursues an obsession with Spanish peppers. From Chris Stewart’s memoir of his rural retreat in Driving Over Lemons to Barbara Kingsolver’s idyllic portrait of the Canary Islands in “Where the Map Stopped,” the glimpses of another world in Spain in Mind will enchant you.

KLIATT

With students traveling all over the world these days, the idea behind this series is a good one: to give students a quick cultural history of a country they're studying or visiting. One of eight currently in the series (others include France, Italy, and Mexico), this volume on Spain includes some fine writing, but many may find it (as I did) way too heavily weighted toward pieces written long ago. It includes some wonderful writers (Hemingway, Henry James, Jan Morris, Somerset Maugham) and a nice mix of shorter and longer pieces, and fiction and nonfiction (and even some poetry). But it could really use subcategories in its organization (Calvin Trillin followed by Anthony Trollope?) instead of just one piece after another with little seeming order. Also, something many visitors could use is some more recent reportage/impressions of a country that is vastly different than it was even a few decades ago. To my mind this book is better in theory than execution, but it still might be one language departments will want to have on hand as a reference source. Reviewer: Daniel Levinson

Alice Leccese Powers is the editor of the anthologies Italy in Mind, Ireland in Mind, France in Mind, and Tuscany in Mind, and co-editor of The Brooklyn Reader: Thirty Writers Celebrate America’s Favorite Borough. A freelance writer and editor, she has been published in The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, Newsday, and many other newspapers and magazines. Ms. Powers also teaches writing at the Corcoran School of Art and Georgetown University. She lives in Washington, D.C.