C. S. Lewis: Life and Letters

All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis 1922 -1927. Edited by Walter Hooper.

Foreword by Owen Barfield. With 8 pages of photographs. Harcourt/Brace/Jovanovich. “The life of young C.S. Lewis was filled with contemplations quite different from those of the mature Christian apologist and well-known author, and this early diary--begun when Lewis was twenty-three--provides readers an excellent window on his formative world. At the time of these writings, Lewis was a student at Oxford with atheistic convictions. Newly returned from the war, he filled his days with studies, trips to the countryside, friendships, and, most interestingly, a home life with Mrs. Moore, a woman twenty-six years his senior. Irish-born like Lewis, Moore was the mother of a friend killed in the war, and she, her daughter Maureen, and Lewis lived a frugal life together on the stipend passed along by Lewis's father--who was unaware of the housekeeping arrangement.” – from the back cover.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Diary. Biography. Softcover.

C. S. Lewis: Images of His World, by Douglas Gilbert and Clyde S. Kilby.

“This reissue of a treasured classic offers a window into the people and places that shaped the life of beloved author, scholar, and apologist C. S. Lewis. In photographs and text (much of it in Lewis's own words), Douglas Gilbert and Clyde S. Kilby introduce us to such memorable friends as J. R. R. Tolkien and transport us to such magical places as the deer park outside Lewis's rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford. We also meet Lewis as a talented and brilliant child in Belfast, captivated by the myths and legends of the North, already writing and illustrating imaginative stories and poems at a young age. While the book includes an essay tracing Lewis's struggle to find faith and a chronology of his life, it is not a biography per se but rather a personal introduction, a composite portrait of a fascinating individual and the world in which he lived. Attractively laid out in a fresh new format, this volume will be prized both by longtime fans of Lewis and by those encountering him for the first time.” – Amazon.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Album. Biography. Hardback.

C. S. Lewis and His World, by David Barratt.

Thin little book (for children? or people with not much time?) on Lewis and his work, with a fair amount of pictures to help fill it up.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Biography. Hardback.

The Magic Never Ends: The Life and Work of C. S. Lewis, by John Ryan Duncan.

“An Illustrated Profile of One of the Twentieth Century’s Most Influential Writers”. A widely spaced book plumped out with lots of photos and quotes in colored squares apart from the text. I always get books like this in search of a new crumb of information or rare picture connected to Lewis. Not bad, I imagine, if you don’t have all the other books about Lewis that I have.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Biography. Hardback.

Letters of C. S. Lewis: Revised and Enlarged Edition. Edited and with a Memoir by W. H. Lewis. Revised Edition Edited by Walter Hooper.

“The letters collected here cover a vast range of subjects--books, nature, people, and every aspect of God and His world--and extend from C.S. Lewis's early days as a student and atheist up to a few weeks before his death. His correspondence with family, friends, and even fans, offers readers an opportunity to share Lewis's wit and originality. Introduced and edited by Walter Hooper, this volume represents an important revision to the collection of Lewis's letters published in 1966: several letters have been added, proper dates have been restored to some, correspondents' names to others. And, as in the original volume, selected entries from Lewis's own diary are included, as is Warnie Lewis's fascinating memoir of his brother's life.”  - from the back cover. Harcourt/Brace.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Collected Letters. Biography.

They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914 – 1963), Edited by Walter Hooper.

Arthur Greeves was Lewis’s first great friend; they bonded together over a love for Northern myths when Lewis was sent to visit him as a neighborly duty. Through this correspondence of over fifty years, during which Greeves remained in Ireland with Lewis visiting only now and then, they kept up a friendship of deepest personal trust, with Lewis revealing his streak of sadomasochism and Greeves his ‘uranism’, which Lewis neither condoned nor judged. Lewis described Arthur as “after my brother, my oldest and most intimate friend.”

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Letters. Biography. Hardback.

Letters to an American Lady, by C. S. Lewis. Edited by Clyde S. Kilby.

Eerdman’s. “On October 26, 1950, C. S. Lewis wrote the first of more than a hundred letters he would send to a woman he had never met, but with whom he was to maintain a correspondence for the rest of his life.
Ranging broadly in subject matter, the letters discuss topics as profound as the love of God and as frivolous as preferences in cats. Lewis himself clearly had no idea that these letters would ever see publication, but they reveal facets of his character little known even to devoted readers of his fantasy and scholarly writings -- a man patiently offering encouragement and guidance to another Christian through the day-to-day joys and sorrows of ordinary life. Letters to an American Lady stands as a fascinating and moving testimony to the remarkable humanity and even more remarkable Christianity of C. S. Lewis and is richly deserving of the position it now takes among the balance of his Christian writings.” – Amazon. [Lacks this jacket.]

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Collected Letters. Hardback.

Letters to Children, by C. S. Lewis. Edited by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead.

Forward by Douglas Gresham. Culled letters addressed specifically to children, most often about Narnia but includes advice on faith and life. “I have done lots of dish-washing and I have often been read to, but I never thought of your very sensible idea of doing both together.”

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Collected Letters. Softcover.

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume I: Family Letters 1905 -1931; The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Books, Broadcasts and the War 1931 -1949; The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963; Edited by Walter Hooper.

The three heavy volumes that make obsolete all other books of Lewis letters (though they remain handy for being ‘themed’). Almost literally tons of letters, and all arranged in chronological order (except for a few stray letters that were added in the third volume that had not been discovered previously). Monumental; I have to give Hooper kudos for his labor.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Collected Letters. Biography. Hardbacks.

Items from the Wish List: Dorothy L. Sayers

Creed or Chaos? by Dorothy L. Sayers  (Author)

Today you hear it even from many well-meaning Christians: "It doesn't really matter what you believe, so long as you're sincere." These pages demonstrate that such a "doctrineless Christianity" is not merely impossible; it's dangerous. Indeed, argues author Dorothy L. Sayers, if Christians don't steep themselves in doctrine, then the Christian Faith - and the world outside the Faith - will descend into chaos. It's a surprising argument these days, but once you've finished these lucid and often witty pages, you'll agree with Sayers that dogma is no exercise in hair-splitting about insignificant matters; it's a vibrant window into the splendor of God's truth, a window that each Christian soul needs. Doctrine is vital to your faith, to my faith, and even to the faith of the simplest believers. Each of us must make a stark choice: creed . . . or chaos! These pages show why there's no way you can avoid that choice - and they help you to choose wisely. – Amazon.

Catholic Tales and Christian Songs by Dorothy Leigh Sayers (Author)

Four Sacred Plays by Dorothy L. Sayers  (Author)

This book contains four short plays by Sayers on a religious theme. The Zeal of Thy House was written for Canterbury Cathedral and dramatizes an episode in its construction. The Devil to Pay is a reworking of the Faust legend. He That should Come is a nativity play, originally written for radio, in natural language. The Just Vengeance is about the spirit of a fallen airman, returning to Lichfield Cathedral, for which it was written. – Amazon.

The Emperor Constantine

by Dorothy L. Sayers  (Author), Ann Loades (Introduction)

A brief 'Prologue' by the 'Church' introduces the career of Constantine (from AD 305-337) with scenes from the empires of both west and east, concentrating on Constantine's progress to imperial power and inevitably in religious belief. He discovers Christ to be the God who has made him his earthly vice-regent as single Emperor. Summoning the Council of Nicaea in 325, an invigorating debate results in the acceptance of Constantine's formula that Christ is 'of one substance with God' The implications of the Creed of Nicaea are revealed in the last part of the play in which it is Constantine's mother, Helena, who brings him to the realization that he needs redemption by Christ for his political and military life as well as for the domestic tragedy which has resulted in the death of his son. – Amazon.

The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement: On Dante and Other Writers by Dorothy L. Sayers  (Author), Barbara Reynolds (Introduction)

Introducing the Dante Papers Trilogy: Introductory Papers on Dante Further Papers on Dante The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement The Poetry of Search, with which the book opens, puts forward the suggestion that controversy about what kind of thing poetry ought to be has tended to overlook the fact that there are two kinds of poetry, corresponding roughly to the categories of Romantic and Classical but which she prefers to describe as the Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement. The poet of search writes to find out what he feels-Keats is an example-and the poet of statement writes to tell what he knows-and here Dante is the master. Dante the Maker, which follows, discusses two examples of this method as poet of statement: First, how the whole of the Paradiso is built like a bridge between the first and the last terrains, and how roads from all the other parts of the poem run together to one point from which to pass over that bridge; secondly, how from a single unadorned statement in the seventh canto the reader who shares Dante's background may construct a whole labyrinth of associated imagery, turning and returning perpetually upon the central affirmation of fact in which a whole complex of meanings lies implicit. - Amazon

The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: Vol 3 by Dorothy L. Sayers  (Author), Barbara Reynolds (Editor)

The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1951-1957 in the Midst of Life (Vol 4) by Barbara Reynolds (Author)

The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: Child and Woman of Her Time (v. 5) by Barbara Reynolds (Author)

Love All/Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers  (Author), Muriel St. Clare Byrne (Author), Alzina S. Dale (Author)

Further Papers on Dante: His Heirs and His Ancestors by Dorothy L. Sayers  (Author), Barbara Reynolds (Introduction)

Introducing the Dante Papers Trilogy: Introductory Papers on Dante Further Papers on Dante The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement Dr. Sayers' Further Papers on Dante will be warmly welcomed by all who read her Introductory Papers on Dante and by those hundreds more who want to know more about this astonishing poet newly disclosed to them by her vivid Penguin translation of the Inferno and the Purgatorio. The first series dealt mainly with the theological and ethical aspects of the Divine Comedy. The present one is more heterogeneous and pays more attention to the literary and poetic aspects of Dante's work. Here and there an attempt is made to rescue Dante from the exalted isolation in which he stands, and to compare with him other poets writing on similar themes. 'To label any poet hors concours is in a manner to excommunicate him' This is not a work of popularization, but Dr. Sayers has in a high degree the ability to make things plain and readable for the general reader while at the same time revealing much that scholars may have overlooked. – Amazon.

The Just Vengeance

by Dorothy L. Sayers (Author), Ann Loades (Introduction)

In this play, Dorothy L. Sayers addressed the crimes and problems of human life, especially those of the victors in war, in an entirely novel way, by precipitating an airman in the very moment of his death back into the company of citizens of the "City" in this case, Lichfield. The citizens range from Adam and Eve (Adam himself the inventor of the axe which kills Abel) together with other biblical characters in the history of redemption brought to new life as members of the City (e.g, Judas is a common informer). Others bear burdens of shame, toil, fear, poverty, and ingratitude. Former inhabitants (e.g, George Fox, Dr. Johnson) help the airman see that no more than they can he shift the burden of guilt and grief that they all share. There is but one remedy, to join the "Persona Dei" carrying his cross, finding indeed that he bears their burdens for them. The "Persona Dei" is finally seen in resurrection and glory. – Amazon.

The Passionate Intellect: Dorothy L. Sayers' Encounter With Dante by Barbara Reynolds  (Author)

Dorothy L. Sayers, detective novelist, poet, scholar, playwright, and Christian apologist, spent the last fourteen years of her life reading and translating Dante's 'Divine Comedy' The first two volumes of her translation, 'Hell' and 'Purgatory' were published during her lifetime, but when she died in 1957 the third volume, 'Paradise' was unfinished. It was completed by her friend Barbara Reynolds. Thirty years later Barbara Reynolds wrote this book, the first full-length study of this illuminating stage in the creative life of Dorothy Sayers. Drawing on personal reminiscences and unpublished letters, she tells a moving and compelling story. The work explores the dynamic impact of Dante upon a mature mind. New light is shed on Dorothy Sayers' personality, her relationship with her friends, her methods of work, and her intellectual and spiritual development. Readers of Dante, no less than readers of Sayers, will find this an exciting book. – Amazon.

Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror Third Series by Dorothy L. Sayers  (Author)

Dorothy L. Sayers Mysteries: Harriet Vane Collection (Strong Poison / Have His Carcase / Gaudy Night)

Edward Petherbridge (Actor), Harriet Walter (Actor), Christopher Hodson (Director), Michael Simpson (Director)  Rated: NR  Format: DVD

The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: Complete Collection

Starring Ian Carmichael (DVD)

The Wimsey Papers—The Wartime Letters and Documents of the Wimsey Family

by Sayers, Dorothy L.

C. S. Lewis: More Core Works and Narnia

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. 

Items from the Wish List: Maurice Baring

 

Have You Anything to Declare? A Notebook with Commentaries by Maurice Baring  (Author)

The Collected Poems by Maurice Baring  (Author)

The Blue Rose Fairy Book by Maurice Baring  (Author), Arthur Rackham (Illustrator)

Maurice Baring Restored: Selections from his work by Maurice Baring  (Author)

C. S. Lewis: Lang. and Lit.

Oxford History of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Hardback); The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Galaxy; Dedicated to Owen Barfield; Softcover); A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’ (Oxford Press; Dedicated to Charles Williams, Softcover); The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Canto; Dedicated to Roger Lancelyn Green; Softcover); Studies in Words (Canto; Softcover); Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Canto; Softcover); An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge University Press; Softcover); Image and Imagination (Cambridge; Edited by Walter Hooper; Softcover), by C. S. Lewis.

Before (and indeed, during) his stint as a Christian apologist and children’s author, Lewis was an academic at Oxford and later Cambridge. As such, he published some very well respected and influential books on English literature. His style is so lucid, conversational, and enthusiastic, he makes even the driest subjects (‘Sixteenth Century Literature’) seem interesting. When he gets on more interesting topics (‘Discarded Image’) he becomes positively riveting – at least to me.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: English Literature. Criticism.