webstore

The epistolary exchange between Pedro Salinas and Jorge Guillén have been several times the subject of study, as well as the letters of León Sánchez Cuesta, who is known as the bookseller of the Generation of ’27. The Residencia de Estudiantes published in 2009 the letters that Sánchez sent to and received from the poet Gabriel Celaya. However, the complete edition collecting the crossed letters of Salinas and Guillén with Sánchez Cuesta had not been published yet. This edition comprises a total of 293 letters, some of them unpublished until now.

The collected letters are divided into two different sections. The first section contains the letters between Pedro Salinas and León Sánchez Cuesta, sent between 1925 and 1951 (date of death of Salinas), while the second section contains letters shared between Jorge Guillén and the bookseller, written between 1925 and 1974.

Despite the rich epistolary outlook of that period, these mails are considered special due to their nature. Switching from personal to commercial issues, the letters contain poetic projects, vital concerns and personal reflections but they also display a list of the books that Salinas and Guillén requested to León Sánchez Cuesta’s bookstore, not only for their personal reading but also for their courses at the University, which is useful to map their literary tastes and the aesthetical coincidences between both of the poets as well as the group of writers and intellectuals they aligned to. Additionally, the book discloses the role that León Sánchez Cuesta fulfilled in the cultural context of the first half of the XX Century in Spain as the mediator of the conflict between Jorge Guillén and Juan Ramón Jimenez in 1933 that ended their friendship.

The parallelism between Guillén’s and Salinas’ lives incited the publication of their mailing with the famous bookseller in the same volume, establishing the similitude of their interests as readers, as well as the special relationship that they had with Sánchez Cuesta. Both authors continued sharing letters and requesting books while being exiled after the break caused by the Spanish Civil War.

Pedro Salinas / Jorge Guillén. Epistolario. Correspondencia con León Sánchez Cuesta, 1925-1974 —prepared by the researcher Juana María González García, doctor in Spanish Literature (Universidad de Granada) and professor at the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, and prefaced by Andrés Soria Olmedo, professor of Spanish Literature at the Universidad de Granada— is the twelfth volume of the collection published by the Residencia de Estudiantes of collected letters.

PAPERBACK, 14 x 21,5 cm. 586 pp.
22 ilustrations
ISBN: 978-84-939988-8-2