This poem-by-poem guide to Lorca's Romancero gitano was prompted by the need for some form of guidance to the overwhelming amount of critical material published on the book, the relative neglect or misunderstanding of certain poems and a concern to counter a recent tendency to eccentric interpretation.
Herbert Ramsden's comprehensive collection of commentaries will be useful both for students and teachers and for the Lorca specialist. With each poem the author offers a brief introduction to relevant background material, a comprehensive commentary, a brief indication of interpretations...

Lorca is one of the outstanding poets of Spanish literature, and apart perhaps from his trilogy of stage tragedies, "Romancero gitano" is his most celebrated work: innovative, sophisticated, difficult and uniquely popular. Partly, no doubt, it is the appeal of his gypsies, childlike and magical, oppressed by the world around; partly too, the work's elemental concerns: machismo, honor, sex, betrayal, revenge, bloodshed, death; partly also, the many echoes of Andalusian popular culture: horsemen and smugglers, fiestas and local saints, legends and superstitions, ballads and deep song. By its...