Jaume Vallcorba Plana

Life and career

Born in Tarragona, Catalonia, he completed an Arts degree at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and obtained a PhD at the University of Barcelona with a thesis on Josep Maria Junoy and the early European avant-garde movements. He was a lecturer and professor in Literature at the University of Bordeaux, the University of Lleida, the University of Barcelona and the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona) but he left university teaching in 2004.

He was a permanent member of the Royal Academy of Doctors of Catalonia and a scholar of medieval aesthetics and literature. He founded the publishing houses Quaderns Crema in 1979 and Editorial Acantilado in 1999 and has been director of both since their inception. As a scholar, his main contribution to the world of letters was a new perspective on the early-twentieth-century avant-garde movements. In the realm of publishing he has launched the brilliant generation of new writers in Catalan, including Quim Monzó, Sergi Pàmies and Empar Moliner. Featuring in his catalogue in Spanish are great classics from the past, a rediscovery he has helped to bring about in the form of new editions – Chateaubriand, James Boswell and Montaigne, for example – along with a considerable number of European authors, from Pessoa, to Imre Kertész, Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth. He has introduced to Spanish readers a considerable number of contemporary Central European writers as well as new talents writing in Spanish.

He published numerous studies on aesthetics and literature and was directly commissioned by the poet J. V. Foix to publish his poetic oeuvre. He also published Junoy’s poetry.

Essay

Prizes

Among the prizes and awards Jaume Vallcorba Plana has received are the following: