Joan Gili / Dolphin Book Company collection

Includes personal papers, author files, lists of stock of Dolphin Bookshop (1930s) including lists (c1937) of books on the Spanish Civil War, catalogues of publishing house. Subject files include Anglo-Catalan Society, Anglo-Spanish Society. Correspondents include Pablo Neruda, Manuel Guerro, Rafael Martinez Nadal, Carmen Conde, Salvador Esprui, Jose Aberich, R. E. Batchelor, J. M. Batista I Roca, Peter Russell, F. J. Norton, Stephen Spender, C. Henry Warren, E. M. Torner, Maria Manent, Andre Belamich, Joan Montal, Frank Pierce. Author files include Carles Riba, Josep Carner, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Federico Garcia Lorca, Enrique Montero, Peter R. Beardsell, Miquel Martin i Pol, Paul Russell-Gebbett, A. Dias Rosenzweig, L. A. Murillo. Other subject files include Apel les Fenosa, Robert Tate, Valbuena y Prat, Robert Pring-Mill, Peter Russell, Catalan phrasebook and grammar. Also film script and stage directions for film Barry Lyndon, pamphlet Declarcio de Consell Nacional de Catalunya (1944).

Joan Gili was born into a publishing family in Barcelona in 1907 and emigrated to Britain in 1934. He helped found the Dolphin bookshop near Charing Cross Road, London and began his career as a publisher of Hispanic works in 1938. In the following year, Stephen Spender and Gili produced a translation of Nadal's selection of Lorca's poems. Gili wrote the influential "Introductory Catalan Grammar" in 1943. Several volumes of his translations of Catalan poems were published in the next few decades. Gili became a founding member of the Anglo-Catalan Society in 1954 and was later its president. He was also known as the "unofficial consul of the Catalans in Britain". The Dolphin Book Company was founded by Joan Gili and C. Henry Warren shortly after Gili had settled in London in October 1934. The bookshop was initially based at the Charing Cross Road. At first, English and Spanish books were sold although Gili soon became the sole proprietor and concentrated on Spanish stock. The publising side of the business was established in the wake of the success of the bookshop: Dolphin's first significant publication in England was in 1938. The Company published numerous translations of Spanish and South American literature in the succeeding years. Highlights included the publication in 1950 of J. B. Trend's translations of Fifty Spanish Poems by Juan Ramon Jimenez, and the translation of Plero y Yo, which appeared six years later to wide critical acclaim.

Open for research although at least 24 hours notice should be given. Access to some files might be restricted by data protection legislation. Contact staff for details

Listed to file level. A pdf version is attached to the online fonds-level description, http://archives.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/dispatcher.aspx?action=search&database=ChoiceArchive&search=priref=110048679

Other papers of Joan Gili are also held at Senate House Library (MS1154)