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This book brings together for the first time José Moreno Villa’s autobiographical writings, one of the most outstanding figures of the so-called Generation of 14, a protagonist and privileged witness of the literary and artistic circles of Madrid during the years prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, and later of Mexico, the country that gave shelter to many of the Spanish exiles.

Moreno Villa lived in the Residencia de Estudiantes for almost twenty years. In 1937, he was forced to start a new life in Mexico, where he was one of the founding members of El Colegio de México, a center with which he would remain involved until his death. There, he felt the need to tell about his reminiscences and decided to write his memoirs, Vida en claro (1944), the book that opens this publication, which contains the first written testimony about the history of the Residencia de Estudiantes, and it is one of the most beautiful autobiographies of Spanish contemporary literature. Also in this volume, the articles that he published in Mexico between 1937 and 1955 are presented for the first time as a unit. In these articles, he continued with his recollections about his Spanish friends, such as Antonio Machado, Miguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset, Alberto Jiménez Fraud, Luis Buñuel, and Federico García Lorca; and also about his Mexican friends, such as Alfonso Reyes, Genaro Estrada, Octavio Paz, Xavier Villaurrutia, and Juan José Arreola.

Juan Pérez de Ayala has been able to gather a collection of unpublished manuscripts and articles virtually unknown, many of them preserved in the archives of the Residencia, including most notably "Escritos sobre la guerra civil española”, the “Memorias revueltas” series, and “Amistades mexicanas y extranjeras”, as well as other unpublished pages from his diaries, stories and memories of events that Moreno Villa experienced.

Editor: Juan Pérez de Ayala
ISBN: 978-84-938860-4-2
752 pp.
Illustrations: 132 (82 in b/w and 50 in color)
Hardcover
Size: 15 x 22 cm.