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A Spaniard in the Works is a nonsense book by English musician John Lennon, first published on 24 June 1965. The book consists of nonsensical stories and drawings similar to the style of his previous book, 1964's In His Own Write.[1] The name is a pun on the expression "a spanner in the works".[2]
Sales of the book were lower than Lennon's first book, with 100,000 copies bought in the three months following publication.[3]
BackgroundFurther information: In His Own Write
The second book was more disciplined because it was started from scratch. They said, "You've got so many months to write a book in." I wrote In His Own Write – at least some of it – while I was still at school, and it came spontaneously. But once it became: "We want another book from you, Mr. Lennon," I could only loosen up to it with a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and I thought, "If it takes a bottle every night to get me to write ..." That's why I didn't write any more.[4]
— John Lennon, 1965
While some of John Lennon's first book, In His Own Write, had been written years earlier, he mostly wrote A Spaniard in the Works over the course of 1964.[5] Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall recalled Lennon writing some of the book in Paris in January 1964[6] – predating the 23 March 1964 publication of In His Own Write[7] – and bandmate George Harrison recalled Lennon writing while the two holidayed with their women, Pattie Boyd and Cynthia Lennon, in Tahiti in May 1964. Harrison, Boyd and Cynthia contributed lines, with Lennon sometimes inquiring of them for words that would work better in a particular sentence.[8] During the same holiday, Lennon occupied himself by reading the books left on their private boat, including a complete set of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Recognising the formula the stories employed, he spent three weeks writing a parody.[9]
When most of the book was complete, the publisher, Jonathan Cape, requested more material from Lennon. To encourage him, they sent an Italian dictionary, which Lennon read through and found "a howl on its own". Despite further publisher requests that some material be removed or changed, Lennon argued for everything to be kept so as to maintain the work's spontaneity.[4]
