2003 - Exeter College - University of Oxford

Rachel C.F. Robinson (1997, Archeology and Anthropology) was awarded the first J. L. Gili Travel
Bursary in Catalan Studies. In this article, the new bursary and its inception is explored...
THE J.L. GILITRAVEL BURSARY IN
CATALAN STUDIES
Trinity 2003
Mr Joan Lluís Gili was at one time member
of the Common Room at Exeter,
and held an honorary MA presented in
the Oxford Congregation on 23 May 1987, shortly
after his eightieth birthday. An exiled Catalan publisher,
bookseller, scholar, and translator of Catalan
poets into English, he died in Oxford in May 1998.
His wife, Elizabeth, generously funded the J. L. Gili
Graduate Bursary for Catalan Studies, which was
awarded for the first time this year to Rachel
Robinson, who completed her BA in Archeology
and Anthropology earlier this year.
Born and reared in Barcelona as Joan Lluís Gili i
Serra, he was the grandson, son and nephew of an
important family of Barcelona booksellers and
publishers. Trained in his father’s shop for a career
in publishing, he then became the sole owner
of a specialised small press and bookshop in London
in 1935, and was naturalised in 1948. With
C. Henry Warren, he founded The Dolphin Bookshop,
intending to specialise in ‘those English books
which you will not only want to read but to keep’,
and Spanish books of every description. The first
Dolphin Bookshop Edition was published in
1936, a collection of
Unamuno’s writings, followed
by various other
translations, often prepared
by Gili himself.
In 1938, Joan married
Elizabeth McPherson,
and their house and
bookshop became a
meeting-place for Republican
exiles and their British
sympathisers, and it
was not long before they
received threats from an
official from the rival nationalist-insurgent
Spanish
Embassy in London.
As war began, the Dolphin
Bookshop had to go
Above: The Gili Family with Professor Ian Michael in
to great lengths to protect the newly-acquired com­
2003 in the grounds of Mrs Gili’s former home in plete library of the French Hispanist Foulché-
Oxford
Delbosc, which was establishing the Dolphin Book-
10
EXON - Autumn 2003 - www.exeter.ox.ac.uk/alumni