Ralph Bates (writer)
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
novelist. He is best known for his writings on pre–Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
.
Life
Bates was born in Swindon, England in 1899 and as a teenager worked at the Great Western RailwayGreat Western Railway
The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...
factory. In 1917, he enlisted in the British army and served in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, training soldiers on preparing for poison gas attacks.
After returning from the war, he began to travel, first to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and then, in 1923, to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, where he had wanted to visit since boyhood (his great-grandfather, a steamer captain, was buried in Cadiz
Cádiz
Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....
). He stayed in the country permanently from then on, traveling and doing odd jobs. He published his first work, Sierra, a collection of short stories, in 1933; in 1934 he followed up with a novel, Lean Men.
When the Spanish Civil War began in 1936, Bates enlisted with the government forces and eventually made rank of political commissar
Political commissar
The political commissar is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military...
. He helped to organize the International Brigade
International Brigades
The International Brigades were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939....
. Later that year he traveled to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to raise awareness of the plight of the Spanish Republic.
The year also saw the publication of Bates's best-known work, The Olive Field, about olive workers in southern Spain. The book received good critical notices in the United States.
Bates was briefly arrested for arms smuggling when traveling through France back to Spain in February 1937. Upon his return, he moved to Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
and founded the International Brigade's newspaper, The Volunteer for Liberty. He frequently traveled to the United States and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
in 1937 and 1938, meeting his future wife, Eve Salzman on one trip.
Although it is disputed whether he was ever a Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
member, he had been sympathetic to Communism and friendly with many party members. After the Soviet invasion of Finland
Winter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
in November, 1939, however, he publicly condemned the Communists in an article for The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
.
After the overthrow of the Spanish Republic, Bates moved to Mexico, where he lived for a number of years, publishing The Fields of Paradise in 1940. In 1947, he became a professor of creative writing and English literature at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, a post he would hold until his retirement in 1966. He published his last book, The Dolphin in the Wood, in 1950, although he would continue to work on several unfinished writings up to his death 50 years later.
After his retirement, he moved with his wife to the Greek island of Naxos
Naxos (island)
Naxos is a Greek island, the largest island in the Cyclades island group in the Aegean. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture....
, where he pursued his lifelong hobby of mountain-climbing well into his 80s. He died in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
in 2000, and his cremated remains were scattered in Naxos.