A Festschrift in Memory of James Whiston^*

* This essay is written as a tribute to James Whiston, on behalf of the Editors, past and present, of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

Abstract

This article serves as a preface to the Double-Issue Festschrift which the Bulletin of Spanish Studies has published in memory of James Whiston. Mackenzie assesses Whiston’s lengthy tenure as a General Editor of the journal (2002–2014), recording what he contributed to its editorial management, to its development in content and coverage, and to its worldwide reputation in the field of Hispanic Studies and Researches. In addition, she provides concise commentaries on the more than twenty original articles written for the Festschrift by established scholars in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Europe, Canada and the United States. Apart from the three contributions which make up the Introduction, the articles are to be found, depending on their subject-matter, either in Part I. Pérez Galdós, History, Society and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century Spain and Beyond; or in Part II. Antonio Machado, Poetry, Memory and the Civil War in Spain. Written only a few months before he died, James Whiston’s last article, which Mackenzie also discusses briefly, concerns three Republican poems of the Spanish Civil War and functions, appropriately, as the Epilogue to ‘The Lyf So Short, the Craft So Long to Lerne’: Studies in Modern Hispanic Literature, History and Culture in Memory of James Whiston.

Key words:

• James F. Whiston (1945–2017)
• Trinity College
• Dublin
• Bulletin of Spanish Studies (founded 1923)
• Hispanism
• The Novel in Nineteenth
• Century Spain
• Benito Pérez Galdós
• Spanish Civil War Poetry
• Antonio Machado
• The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

Notes

* This essay is written as a tribute to James Whiston, on behalf of the Editors, past and present, of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

1 For more about the settlement of the dispute, the Bulletin’s reversion to its original title and other changes, see ‘Editorial Preface’, BSS, LXXIX:1 (2002), 1–6. For the Bulletin’s previous history and its plans for development from 2002 onwards, see Ann L. Mackenzie, ‘The Next Century: The Bulletin Goes Forward’, BSS, LXXIX:1 (2002), 7–32.

2 Quoted from the email, dated 26 January 2017, sent from David Green, Global Publishing Director, Taylor & Francis Group, to Ann L. Mackenzie, General Editor, Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

3 See email from Lesley Wylie to Ceri Byrne, 2 March 2016.

4 See James Whiston, ‘An “Irish” Story of Jorge Luis Borges: Tema del traidor y del héroe’, Hermathena. A Trinity College Dublin Review, CXIV (1972), 23–28. See also, below, email from Edwin Williamson, University of Oxford, to Ceri Byrne, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, dated 18 January 2017.

5 Quoted from Lesley Wylie’s email to Ann Mackenzie, dated 15 March 2017; and from the second page of her article published in this volume.

6 See James Whiston, ‘Patience and Pragmatism: Galdós’s Rewriting of the Last Four Chapters of Halma’, Anales Galdosianos, LII (2017), 79–89. James had been commissioned by Pablo Jauralde to do ebook editions of Halma and Nazarín for the series Clásicos Hispánicos.

7 Quoted by Preston from Paul Kennedy’s review of Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire (see below, Preston, ‘A Professional Historian in Private Practice’, note 70).

8 See James Whiston, ‘ “Obligación de opinar”: The Limits of Pluralism in Manuel Azaña’s La velada en Benicarló’, in The Republic Besieged: Civil War in Spain 1936–1939, ed., with an intro., by Paul Preston & Ann L. Mackenzie (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U. P., 1996), 241–60 (p. 259).

9 See Susana Bayó Belenguer, ‘Introduction’ to Living the Death of Democracy in Spain: The Civil War and Its Aftermath, ed, with an intro., by Susana Bayó Belenguer, Ciaran Cosgrove & James Whiston (Abingdon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015), 1–6 (p. 1).

10 Living the Death of Democracy in Spain: The Civil War and Its Aftermath, ed. Bayó Belenguer, Cosgrove & Whiston (2015) appeared originally under the title ‘Agonía republicana’: Living the Death of an Era. Essays on the Spanish Civil War, BSS, LXXXIX:7–8 (2012). Getting It Wrong in Spain: From Civil War to Uncivil Peace (1936–1975), ed., with an intro., by Susana Bayó Belenguer (Abingdon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015) was issued originally under the title Spain’s ‘Agonía republicana’ and Its Aftermath: Memories and Studies of the History, Culture and Literature of the Spanish Civil War, BSS, XCI:1–2 (2014).

11 Quoted from the letter, dated 15 February 2016, which Alex Longhurst, Ann Mackenzie and Ceri Byrne sent to invited contributors to James Whiston’s Festschrift.

12 Quoted from James Whiston, Galdós: Our Contemporary, The Fifth Annual Pérez Galdós Lecture, 2002 (Sheffield: Univ. of Sheffield, 2002), unpaginated [p. 1]; <http://gep.group.shef.ac.uk/whiston.html> (accessed 2 November 2018).

13 Quoted from Whiston, Galdós: Our Contemporary, [p. 1].

14 For further details about this conference, see, under Epilogue, CAL, AM & CB, ‘The Word and the War’.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.