C. S. Lewis: Biographies and Reminiscences

 

C. S. Lewis: At the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences, Edited by James T. Como.

“A collection of essays by twenty-two men and women whose reminiscences of Lewis as teacher, colleague, and friend form an intimate, candid, and sometimes surprising community biography.” – Amazon. A Collier book, bought in the mid-80’s, and a horrible shade of pink and purple. A good insight into Lewis’s friends as well as into Lewis.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Reminisces. Essays. Softcover.

C. S. Lewis Through the Shadowlands: The Story of His Life with Joy Davidman, by Brian Sibley.

This book has been through so many title permutations. It is dedicated to “Roger Lancelyn Green and June”. It is the story of the love of Lewis and Joy that Sibley later adapted into a TV special and then into the Anthony Hopkins movie. Sibley is a superfan of Fantasy and Children’s Books and Disney, and has written many radio adaptations, specials, and movie makings-of books.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Biography. Hardback.

Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times, by George Sayer.

Harper & Row, with Photos. “Sayer describes Lewis' early years, hinting at childhood evidence of the brilliance and eccentricity that would later become Lewis' hallmarks. He discusses Lewis' academic career, his life-transforming conversion to Christianity, and the role of religion in his life. With honesty and compassion, he covers Lewis' controversial relationship with Mrs. Moore and his passionate marriage to Joy Davidman. This biography of C.S. Lewis, poet, novelist, literary critic and theologian is written by a lifelong friend who seeks to present a more balanced portrait than has been possible before, by making use of family papers and the million word diary kept by Lewis's brother. He vividly describes the Belfast background, the cruel schooling and sadism, Lewis' terrible experiences in the Great War, the strange promise to a brother officer that led him to live with a woman twice his age for years at the Kilns, Oxford, the young poet, the academic career and his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien and other Oxford dons who made up The Inklings group. The author goes on to describe Lewis' conversion to Christianity and the run-away success of the wartime Screwtape Lectures on the BBC and the extraordinary marriage to the eccentric American divorcee, Joy Davidman that altered him profoundly in his last years. This book provides a full survey of the whole literary output, academic, fictional, theological and poetic.” – Amazon. It has one of those crumbly paper jackets that never survive for long.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Biography. Hardback.

C. S. Lewis: A Biography, by A. N. Wilson.

Well, I don’t care what some critics say, I like it. There is very little of the hero-worshipper in Wilson, and if he comes up with psychological theories that others don’t agree with, he always has facts to back them up. Of course, the trouble with facts, as Chesterton said somewhere, is that they don’t point one way like a signpost but every which way, like the branches of a tree. Wilson is a very lively and readable writer, and his is an alternative reading that bears some scrutiny and makes for lively debate. Photos.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Biography. Softcover.

C. S. Lewis: A Life, by Michael White.

“Clive Staples Lewis’s path to renown not only as a groundbreaking literary critic and novelist but also as a Christian theologian was at times intellectually and emotionally chaotic, as award-winning author Michael White reveals in this probing new biography. He follows the young Lewis, a nervous man profoundly depressed by the death of his mother, in a spiritually tormented course that would take him to the upper ranks of English letters. He deconstructs Lewis’s novels and religious works to reveal the frequently tormented soul and imagination from which they sprung. Most importantly, he delves into the mythos that has long surrounded Lewis and rediscovers the man beneath.” – Amazon. White, a former member of The Thompson Twins, has also written a biography of Tolkien. Photos.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Biography. Hardback.

Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis, by Douglas Gresham.

Basically the story of Gresham’s life, up to the death of his mother Joy, who had married Lewis, then Lewis’s death, and then Warnie Lewis’s death, after which he no longer has any connection with the Kilns and moved to Australia for many years. It’s ‘Shadowlands’ from the kids’ point of view, and what happened in the aftermath, and why Gresham, basically Lewis’s heir, was poor.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Biography. Memoirs. Hardback.

In Search of C. S. Lewis, Edited by Stephen Schofield.

“Contains previously unpublished letters and photographs.” Includes contributions by Kenneth Tynan and Malcolm Muggeridge (they’re famous!) as well as Lewis regulars George Sayer and Kathryn Lindskoog. Produced by the Canadian C. S. Lewis Society.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Memoirs. Essays. Softcover.

We Remember C. S. Lewis: Essays and Memoirs, Edited by David Graham.

Includes work by George Sayer and Dom Bede Griffiths. Photos.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Memoirs. Softcover.

C. S. Lewis: A Biography (Revised Edition), by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper.

A Harcourt Brace edition. The classical first biography. “C.S. Lewis, a man of varying talents, is remembered for his radio broadcasts and books reaching millions worldwide. This revised biography, created with full access to family papers and personal documents, is written by two men who knew Lewis well. An immensely readable record of Lewis's personal and intellectual life, it includes new information and photographs.” – Google Books. Photos.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Biography. Softcover.

Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship, by Colin Duriez.

“Both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are literary superstars, known around the world as the creators of Middle-earth and Narnia. But few of their readers and fans know about the important and complex friendship between Tolkien and his fellow Oxford academic C.S. Lewis. Without the persistent encouragement of his friend, Tolkien would never have completed The Lord of the Rings. This great tale, along with the connected matter of The Silmarillion, would have remained merely a private hobby. Likewise, all of Lewis' fiction, after the two met at Oxford University in 1926, bears the mark of Tolkien's influence, whether in names he used or in the creation of convincing fantasy worlds. They quickly discovered their affinity--a love of language and the imagination, a wide reading in northern myth and fairy tale, a desire to write stories themselves in both poetry and prose. The quality of their literary friendship invites comparisons with those of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Cowper and John Newton, and G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc. Both Tolkien and Lewis were central figures in the informal Oxford literary circle, the Inklings. This book explores their lives, unfolding the extraordinary story of their complex friendship that lasted, with its ups and downs, until Lewis's death in 1963. Despite their differences--differences of temperament, spiritual emphasis, and view of their storytelling art--what united them was much stronger, a shared vision that continues to inspire their millions of readers throughout the world.” – Google Books. Colin Duriez will be mentioned several other times in this list.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Biography. Literary History. Softcover.

The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, by Alan Jacobs.

Yet another book on Lewis; I suppose I’ll buy anything about him, if I have enough money. “Few things are more interesting to human beings than trying to figure out how another human being (especially a profoundly gifted one) works. Not just a conventional, straightforward biography of Lewis, Jacobs instead seeks a more elusive quarry: an understanding of the way Lewis's experiences, both direct and literary, formed themselves into patterns–themes that then shaped his thought and writings, especially the stories of Narnia. It is in the Narnia stories that we see the most of Lewis, and this illuminating biography delivers a true picture of the life and imagination of the Narnian.” – Google Books. Photos.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Biography. Imagination. Hardback.

C. S. Lewis: Companion and Guide, by Walter Hooper.

“A delightful compendium of information on the life and writing of the twentieth century’s favorite Christian writer.” – Power of Babel. Hooper does it again with entries on people, books, adaptations, institutions, and concepts relating to Lewis, his life, and his work. The scholarship and organization of this book is breath-taking; the entries are snappy but informative, with little fat.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Reference. Biography. Hardback.

The C. S. Lewis Encyclopedia, by Colin Duriez.

“A comprehensive guide to his life, thought, and writings.” But only about a third as long as Hooper’s “Companion and Guide”. So – skimpy, or slimmed down, considering which point of view you take.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Literary Guide. Softcover.

The C. S. Lewis Chronicles, by Colin Duriez. Foreword by Brian Sibley.

“The Indispensable Biography of the Creator of Narnia Full of Little-Known Facts, Events, and Miscellany.” Ah, but not so much a biography as a year by year, almost day by day timeline of Lewis’s life. Includes handy charts that pinpoint or collect certain things (like time and subject of radio talks), what important world events were going on at the same time, and other trivia. This time Duriez has done it right and produced a truly useful book for the Lewis scholar.

Ranking: Essential.

Fie Code: Reference. Softcover. Biography.

The Secret Country of C. S. Lewis, by Anne Arnott. Illustrations by Patricia Frost.

There was a copy of this in the High School library; I don’t remember it being very engaging. However, it is Lewis, and cheap, and a memory, so into the hoard it goes. The cover is surprising; it shows an old Boxen drawing inside a wardrobe. The whole biography is aimed at the young reader, I think. An Eerdman book.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Biography. Hardback.

Jack’s Life: The Life Story of C. S. Lewis, by Douglas Gresham.

“Includes Exclusive Author’s Introduction DVD.” And it is signed by Gresham! A fact I don’t think I’d noticed before making this Inventory. So, he held this book, and he was Lewis’s stepson, and now when I hold this book, I’m only a couple of steps away from C. S. Lewis! Photos.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Biography. Hardback. DVD.

C. S. Lewis in a Time of War, by Justin Phillips. Foreword by Walter Hooper.

Focuses in on “The World War II Broadcasts that Riveted a Nation and Became the Classic ‘Mere Christianity’.” The whys and wherefores and the effect that Lewis had with his broadcasts while London was under attack.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: History. Softcover.

Around the Year with C. S. Lewis and His Friends: A Book of Days, Compiled by Kathryn Lindskoog. Art, calligraphy, and design by Leah Palmer Preiss.

A blank journal book with daily quotes and significant dates from the lives of Lewis and his ‘friends’, which include favorite authors that he never met. Got this in the early 80’s (at least) and it is redolent of the time for me. It’s boxed and has a padded cover, has never been written in and probably never will be. Bought it at Hastings.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Blank Journal. Quote-a-day. Hardback.

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.

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.