Manuel Altolaguirre

Manuel Altolaguirre (29 June 1905 – 26 July 1959) was a Spanish poet, an editor, publisher, and printer of poetry, and a member of the Generation of '27.

Born in the Andalusia city of Málaga in 1905, Altolaguirre's collaborative poets included Emilio Prados, Vicente Aleixandre, and Federico García Lorca. After completing law studies in Granada, Altolaguirre founded the magazine Ambos and returned to Málaga to start the printing shop Imprenta Sur ('Southern Press'), where he drew together many of his friends, publishing most of their early verse.

In 1926 Altolaguirre published his first collection, Las islas invitadas y otros poemas, twenty-four mostly descriptive, soul-searching poems about love, nature, solitude, and death. That same year, he co-founded with Emilio Prados the literary periodical Litorral, whose 1927 triple issue commemorated the three hundredth anniversary of the death of Luis de Góngora, a poet greatly admired by the Generation of '27.

In his second collection, Ejemplo, the poet seemed to want to mold himself into the universe in search of harmony, revealing the influence of Juan Ramón Jiménez. In 1930 he began another literary magazine, Poesía, which he also printed and bound, and to which he contributed poems of love and solitude.

After two-year stay to Paris with his portable printing press, Altolaguirre lived in Madrid, where he produced Soledades juntas, including love poems perhaps inspired by his fellow poet Concha Méndez, whom he married in 1932.

With Méndez, Altolaguirre founded the publications Héroe (for which Juan Ramón Jiménez contributed lyrical character portraits of Spanish heroes) and 1616 (in England, to strengthen the literary relations between Spain and England through publication of poems in the original as well as in translation). In 1616 (the name commemorates the year of the deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare), he published poems by Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Jorge Guillén, Pablo Neruda, and Moreno Villa, among others. He wrote a biography of Garcilaso de la Vega, edited the Antología de la poeśia romántica española, and translated Victor Hugo and other writers.

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