The Soul of Spain was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1908, and it belongs to a tradition of cultural interpretation — books that attempt to explain a nation’s character through analysis of its art, religion, landscape, and history. Ellis traveled extensively in Spain and wrote about it with genuine affection and knowledge, producing a work that was both a travel book and a work of cultural criticism.
Ellis examines Spain through multiple lenses: the landscape (harsh, dramatic, resistant to cultivation), the national art (El Greco, Velázquez, Goya — each expressing a different aspect of the Spanish temperament), the religious tradition (mysticism, asceticism, the Inquisition), the literature (Cervantes, the picaresque tradition), and the daily life of ordinary Spaniards. His method is characteristically empirical: he observes, he records, he draws careful inferences — never imposing a thesis but allowing one to emerge from the accumulation of evidence.
The book belongs to the period before Ellis became notorious for his sexual research. It shows the breadth of his intellectual interests and the quality of his prose — elegant, precise, and genuinely engaging — in a context free from the controversy that surrounded his more famous work.
Collecting The Soul of Spain
First edition (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1908): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First US edition: $30–$80
- First UK edition (Constable, 1908): $40–$100