Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, by C. S. Lewis.
An autobiographical work focusing on the events that led up
to his conversion, a book that he felt was called for after he gained fame as a
Christion apologist. Surprisingly, it was written before he met his future
wife, Joy Davidman. “His personal physician and fellow Inkling Robert E. Havard
said the book should have been called “Suppressed by Jack” because of all the
things Lewis did not discuss about his life.” But then, it is focused on his
spiritual journey. My copy is a pretty faded Harcourt Brace edition from
Yesterday’s Warehouse.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Autobiography. Religion. Softcover.
The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for
Christianity, Reason, and Romanticism, by C. S. Lewis.
An Eerdman’s Edition, it has a map and Lewis’s running
commentary. His first book published after his conversion, in which he follows
in a dream (like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress) the story of a man named
John who flounders far afield in revolt against his childhood faith, then in
better understanding must ‘regress’ back to his home country with clearer eyes.
Full of poetry, a dragon, dwarfs, and caricatures of the philosophical trends
of the 20’s.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Allegorical Novel. Religion. Softcover.
The Pilgrim’s Regress, by C. S. Lewis. Illustrated by Michael
Hague.
Eerdman’s again, but, you know, with Michael Hague, who was
also doing Narnia calendars at the time. No map.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Allegorical Novel. Religion. Hardback.
The Dark Tower and Other Stories, by C. S. Lewis. Edited and
with a Preface by Walter Hooper.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich edition. Contains the four short
stories published during Lewis’s lifetime and two unfinished beginnings of
novels. The titular one, ‘The Dark Tower’, appears to have been slated for
another Ransom story taking place after ‘Out of the Silent Planet’; the subject
of the famous “Lindskoog Controversy”, when she claimed that it was a forgery
by Hooper. I remember reading “The
Shoddy Lands” in one of those magazines in Mrs. Rowley’s class.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Short Stories. Anthology. Softcover.
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, by C. S. Lewis.
Illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg.
Dedicated to Joy Davidman, who helped him greatly in the
creation of the work, both for inspiration and critical insight, and of course
whom he later married. “The revered author’s retelling of the myth of Cupid and
Psyche—what he and many others regard as his best novel. C. S. Lewis brilliantly
reimagines the story of Cupid and Psyche. Told from the viewpoint of Psyche’s
sister, Orual, Till We Have Faces is a brilliant examination
of envy, betrayal, loss, blame, grief, guilt, and conversion. In this, his
final—and most mature and masterful—novel, Lewis reminds us of our own
fallibility and the role of a higher power in our lives.” – Amazon. A
Harcourt/Brace/Jovanovich edition I got in college.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Novel. Myth. Softcover.
C. S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile. Edited by A.
T. Reyes.
“A. T. Reyes reveals a different side of [Lewis]: translator.
Reyes introduces the surviving fragments of Lewis's translation of Virgil's
epic poem, which were rescued from a bonfire. They are presented in parallel
with the Latin text, and are accompanied by synopses of missing sections, and
an informative glossary, making them accessible to the general reader. Writes
Lewis in A Preface to Paradise Lost, “Virgil uses something more
subtle than mere length of time…. It is this which gives the
reader of the Aeneid the sense of having lived through so
much. No man who has read it with full perception remains an adolescent.”
Lewis's admiration for the Aeneid, written in the 1st century BC
and unfolding the adventures of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy and
became the ancestor of the Romans, is evident in his remarkably lyrical
translation. C. S. Lewis's Lost Aeneid is part detective story, as
Reyes recounts the dramatic rescue of the fragments and his efforts to collect
and organize them, and part illuminating look at a lesser-known and intriguing
aspect of Lewis's work.” - Google Books. I’ll get right on it … one of these
days.
Ranking: Keeper.
File Code: Poetry. Translation. Hardback.
Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C. S. Lewis, written
and illustrated by C. S. Lewis. Edited by Walter Hooper.
Harcourt/Brace/Javonovich, 1985. “Boxen is a fictional world that C. S. Lewis ("Jack") and his
brother W. H.
Lewis ("Warnie")
created as children. The world of Boxen was created when Jack's stories about
Animal-Land and Warnie's stories about India were brought together. In Surprised by Joy, Jack explains that the union of
Animal-Land and India took place "sometime in the late eighteenth century
(their eighteenth century, not ours)". During a time when influenza was ravaging many families, the
Lewis brothers were forced to stay indoors and entertain themselves by reading.
They read whatever books they could find, both those written for children and
adults. Influenced by Beatrix Potter's animals, C.S. Lewis wrote about
Animal-Land, complete with details about its economics, politics/government,
and history, as well as illustrations of buildings and characters.” –
Wikipedia. And longer stories, that they called ‘novels’. Lewis later noted
later that there was no ‘whimsy’ in their stories; strip their characters of
their animal disguises and you might as well be reading Dickens or Trollop.
Still, a remarkable record of childhood imagination; the original manuscripts
were passed around to the Lewis’ brothers friends’ children, and Hooper was
only just in time to rescue some manuscripts from the fire to which the aged Warnie
(who loved them dearly, but thought they were too personal to survive him) was
about to consign them.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Childhood Stories. Hardback.
Boxen: Childhood Chronicles Before Narnia, by C. S. Lewis and
W. H. Lewis.
Introduced by Douglas Gresham. An expanded edition of ‘Boxen’
this time acknowledging and adding more of Warnie’s contributions and with more
colorful reproductions of the pictures. Harper Collins 2008.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Childhood Stories. Hardback.
The Complete Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis.
All seven books (in ‘historical order’, from “The Magician’s
Nephew” to “The Last Battle”) with Pauline Baynes’s illustrations colored by
herself and her Map of Narnia on the cover. Published in conjunction with the
release of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, it was an inscribed 2005
Christmas present to Kaitlyn from Andy’s parents. She gave it into my keeping
when she went off to college and got married. Score!
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Omnibus Volume. Fantasy. Hardback.
Past Watchful Dragons: The Origin, Interpretation, and
Appreciation of the Chronicles of Narnia, by Walter Hooper.
An early critical look at the Narnia stories, it is notable
for containing Lewis’s “Outline of Narnian History” and the first draft of what
would come to be “The Magician’s Nephew”, besides of Hooper’s insightful
analysis.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Literary criticism and History. Softcover.
The Land of Narnia, by Brian Sibley. With Illustrations by
Pauline Baynes.
“Brian Sibley Explores the World of C. S. Lewis”. With old
and new pictures by Baynes, photos, and classic children’s book illustrations,
this is a beautiful book by super-fan Sibley. Harper and Row, 1989.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Imaginary Lands. Narnia. Hardback.
A Book of Narnians: The Lion, the Witch, and Others. Adapted
from C. S. Lewis and Illustrated by Pauline Baynes.
A guide to Narnians, both good and evil, with text adapted
from the Chronicles and a new slew of large, colorfully brilliant, and enchanting
pictures from Pauline Baynes, the classical illustrator. I almost missed out on
this one, because I thought it was a repackaging of “The Land of Narnia”, and
what a tragedy that would have been.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Guide. Illustrated. Softcover.
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