R B Cunninghame Graham – författare

The Horses of the Conquest is one of those rare books which, within a brief period, attain the status of classics. First published in England in 1930, then translated into Spanish and published in Argentina in 1946, this is the story of the horses that carried the Conquistadores—Cortés, the Pizarros, and De Soto—to the conquest of the Americas. They came from Spain—piebalds, dark chestnuts, grays, golden bays. They were the companions of brave men, soldiers and conquerors. Their achievements in battle, their vicissitudes with their masters in a world-shaking adventure, make an interesting and highly unusual experience in reading.The author, R. B. Cunninghame Graham—“Don Roberto” south of the Río Grande—was as colorful a character as any of the Conquistadores about whom he wrote so masterfully. W. H. Hudson, his good friend, whose writing influenced Cunninghame Graham’s style, called him a “singular writer,” and his other friends and admirers—among them Joseph Conrad and George Bernard Shaw—agreed.His real home was on the frontiers of North Africa, Texas, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Paraguay, and Brazil—where there were hardships and horses—although he was in truth a curious mixture, Spanish Don and Scottish nobleman by birth, and at various times an adventurer in far places and a member of Parliament.The horses of the Conquest and their feats were his special delight, and he passes to us descriptions of them and their traits. He tells of the horse that became a god and of Gonzalo Silvestre’s incredible ride through the Great Swamp of Florida. His observations are those of a fellow traveler, combining Rabelaisian acuteness with a scientific detachment.

The first volume in this series of Stories and Sketches contains three works first published by Cunninghame Graham between 1895 and 1899. Notes on the District of Menteith (1895), while not a collection of stories, is included because it was the author's first book, a brief survey of the district of Scotland around his house and ancestral estate of Gartmore. In a sense, it is the physical, social and historical landscape seen from the windows of his own home. Father Archangel of Scotland (1896) is a collection of essays and sketches from the hands of both Robert and his wife Gabriela and is their only joint literary venture. The Ipane (1899) is Cunninghame Graham's first true collection of his own short stories and sketches, although he had already published a travel book, Mogreb-Al-Acksa (1898), about his experiences in Morocco. The works follow an overview of the Life and Writings of Robert B. Cunninghame Graham. Two Appendices present an essay on the author's use of foreign languages, and 'Aurora La Cuijini. A Realistic Sketch in Seville.'The title of the volume comes from The Ipane ' - a sort of record of a dream, dreamed upon pampas and on prairies, sleeping upon a saddle under the southern stars, or galloping across the plains in the hot sun, photographed in youth upon the writer's brain - "

"Living with Ghosts", the second volume of this series, contains the collections of stories that Cunningham Graham published between 1900 and 1905, in the period immediately after he was forced to sell his estate of Gartmore and divide his time between London and the smaller house of Ardoch on the Clyde. He was thus made more free to devote himself to writing and achieve a greater output of the stories and sketches that are at the heart of his literary endeavour. The collections, Thirteen Stories (1900), Success (1902), and Progress, and Other Sketches (1905), display his new-found confidence about his own skills and ability to handle the wide-ranging subject matter that became his trademark. "I, writing as a man who has not only seen, but lived with ghosts, may perhaps find pardon for this preface, for who would run in heavily and dance a hornpipe on the turf below which sleep the dead?" (Thirteen Stories, Preface) Alan MacGillivray is a specialist in Scottish Literature, who has lectured at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and is a former President of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. John C.McIntyre taught Spanish Language and Latin American Literature at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He holds a postgraduate Diploma in Scottish Literature.

Ice House of the Mind is the third of this series of Stories and Sketches. It contains the collections, His People, Faith and Hope, published between 1906 and 1910, which present a typical mix of Cunninghame Graham's stories set in widely separated locations and drawing on his vast experience of life in different classes of human society. The stories are suffused with Cunninghame Graham's striking blend of the elegiac mood and unsentimental realism. "All that we write is but a bringing forth again of something we have seen or heard about. What makes it art is but the handling of it, and the imagination that is brought to bear upon the theme out of the writer's brain. It follows therefore that all writing, as I said before, brings sorrow in its train...To record, even to record emotions, is to store up a fund of sadness, and that is why all writing is a sort of icehouse of the mind...(Faith, Preface). Alan MacGillivray is a specialist in Scottish Literature, who has lectured at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and is a former President of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. John C.McIntyre taught Spanish Language and Latin American Literature at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He holds a postgraduate Diploma in Scottish Literature.

Fire from a Black Opal is the fourth of this series of Stories and Sketches. It contains the collections, Charity, A Hatchment and Brought Forward, published between 1912 and 1916, immediately prior to and during the First World War. Cunninghame Graham was by now in his sixties, yet many of the stories demonstrate his amazing powers of recall for the experiences and feelings of his youth. Equally the later stories reveal a close empathy with the terrible demands that the war was making on people of different nations. "Honour and virtue do not of necessity take with them charity; neither can base estate nor any adverse circumstance of life stifle it in the hearts of those, to whom it comes, just as the fire shines out from a black opal, almost without their ken." Charity, Preface. Alan MacGillivray is a specialist in Scottish Literature, who has lectured at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and is a former President of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. John C. McIntyre taught Spanish Language and Latin American Literature at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He holds a postgraduate Diploma in Scottish Literature. James N.Alison is a retired HM Inspector of Schools with specialist interests in Scottish literature, children's books and landscapes.

This fifth and final volume of Cunninghame Graham stories and sketches brings together the three collections he published in the last decade of his life. Redeemed, and Other Sketches appeared in 1927, followed in 1933 by Writ in Sand, and in 1936, the year of his death, by Mirages. There is a sense of winding down in the pieces presented. The characteristic Graham astringency and irony are less intense, and there is more conventional sentiment. However, some of the familiar targets for his distaste and anger are still being picked off. Graham shows himself to be fully alive to the increasingly menacing world of 1930s Europe. If he had lived, there is little doubt about where his sympathies would have lain. Graham died on the 20th March 1936. Exactly four months later, the Spanish Civil War began. "I thanked the stationmaster for his horse, unsaddled him, emptied a tin mug of water over his sweating back, and threw him down a bundle of fresh Pindo leaves to keep him occupied till he was ready for his maize. Then I strolled into the station cafe, where Exaltacion Medina, Joao Ferreira, and, I think, Enrique Clerici were playing billiards, whilst they waited for me."(Writ in Sand, "The Stationmaster's Horse"), Preface Alan MacGillivray is a specialist in Scottish Literature, who has lectured at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and is a former President of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. John C. McIntyre taught Spanish Language and Latin American Literature at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He holds a postgraduate Diploma in Scottish Literature. James N. Alison is a retired HM Inspector of Schools with specialist interests in Scottish literature, children's books and landscapes.