The unedited correspondence exchanged between G. Gili i Roig and A. Valbuena Prat allows us to discover important details about the genesis and the intricate editing process of the original and innovative Historia de la literatura espanola, originally published in 1937. These new elements help to clarify doubts and dark passages about this historiographical enterprise. The first letters of Valbuena/Gili's epistolary examined in this work (the first of a five-part series) deal with the origin and the evolution of the project, by providing the names of those who were involved in it.
