Grub Street in Spain

W HEN George Gissing published his New Grub Street in 1891, he gave to the world a true picture of the struggles and sufferings which so many authors have undergone. The conditions he pictured cannot be called exaggerated unless we insist on generalizing too broadly, for they are conditions which existed in the past and prevail to no little extent even at the present time. In all the countries of Europe the struggling author has endured hardship and privation to a degree that can hardly be appreciated in the America of today. And perhaps in no country has he been confronted with such bleakness of outlook and reward as in Spain. Among those European nations which have given the world a great cultural legacy, Spain has been the poorest. In an almost continual economic decline since the Renaissance, she has never rewarded amply the large number of creative geniuses who down the years have made Spanish culture what it is. In the Golden Age patronage of the arts was not practiced in Spain as it was in Italy. Many of the greatest writers of that period found economic security and leisure for writing only in the Church. But the greatest of all, Cervantes, who never wore the cloth, went hungry even while his Don Quixote was the talk of Spain and Europe. In the eighteenth century, that great creative genius, Ram6n de la Cruz, spent most of his productive life in a state of poverty that was nearly abject.' It is even reported that at times, in order to keep soul within body, he used to go con el pucherete escondido bajo la capa, a tomar la sopa boba de los Capuchinos de la Paciencia,2 and he died in such destitution that his wife was forced on the very day of his demise to beg funds for the burial from the Contaduria where he had worked.3 But it is the nineteenth century in which the difficulties of authors multiply and grow. This fact is in line with the great growth in publication, which invited and produced an increase in the number of authors

Archaeology · Economic geography · Geography · Early Modern Spanish Literature · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies