Federico García Lorca wrote the Gypsy Ballads between 1924 and 1927. When the book was published it caused a sensation in the literary world. Drawing on the traditional Spanish ballad form, Lorca described his Romancero Gitano as ‘the poem of Andalucía...A book that hardly expresses visible Andalusia at all, but where hidden Andalucía trembles’. Seeking to relate the nature of his proud and troubled region of Spain, he drew on a traditional gypsy form; yet the homely, unpretentious style of these poems barely disguises the undercurrents of conflicted identity never far from Lorca’s work. This bilingual edition, translated by Jane Duran and Glora García Lorca, is illuminated by photos and illustrations of and by Lorca, his own reflections on the poems and introductory notes by leading Lorca scholars: insights into the Romancero and the history of the Spanish ballad form by Andrés Soria Olmedo; notes on the dedications by Manuel Fernández-Montesinos; Lorca's 1935 lecture; and an introduction by Professor Christopher Maurer to the problems and challenges faced by translators of Lorca. True to the spirit of Lorca’s remarkable artistry, the book has been designed by John Morgan, one the UK’s most imaginative typographic designers, with a gradated green cloth cover embossed on the front and back with Lorca’s own playful line drawings.
