Clive Lewis - Collected Letters Volume Three - Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963

Readers should note that the abbreviation ‘TS’ means the letter was typed by Lewis’s brother Warnie; ‘PC’ means it was written on a postcard. As Lewis grew older, and had more letters to answer, he often restricted his replies to postcards. Readers will also notice the abbreviation ‘p.p.’– per procurationem –meaning ‘through another’. If Lewis was not present when Warnie had typed a letter for him Warnie would sometimes sign his brother’s name, and I have indicated this by ‘p.p.’ Although most of the typed letters were composed by Lewis himself, I suspect that Warnie had a hand in the writing of a few of those marked ‘p.p.’

The eight years I have spent editing the letters would not have been as fruitful nor as pleasant were it not for the help of many others. My debts are numerous, and nothing I can say can adequately reflect my gratitude.

I begin by thanking the Classical scholar, Dr A. T. Reyes, who is responsible for most of the Latin and Greek references in the three volumes of letters. I would be embarrassed if readers knew the extent of that obligation. Others to whom my debts are very great are Dr Francis Warner, Dr Barbara Everett, Professor Emrys Iones, Dr lames Como, Dr John Walsh, Dr Tobias Reinhardt and Tyler Fisher. I could not have persevered without their encouragement. If I could say how much I owe Dr Michael Ward, Richard leffrey, Andrew Cuneo, Madame Eliane Tixier, Dr René Tixier, Raphaela Schmid, Patrick Nold and William Griffin, readers might wonder what part, if any, I had in editing these letters. I can never be grateful enough to Dr loel Heck, who spent an entire term in Oxford with his wife Cheryl typing many of the letters in this volume. My grateful thanks to Lewis’s pupils, Professor Derek Brewer and Professor Alastair Fowler, who gave me much help. I owe many good words to Dr Robin Darwall-Smith, Archivist of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Dr Ronald Hyam, Archivist of Magdalene College, Cambridge, who provided me with letters from their college libraries.

I could not have done without the vital help given me by various people at the Wade Center, notably Dr Christopher Mitchell, Marjorie Lamp Mead, Heidi Truty and Laura Schmidt. I gladly acknowledge a huge debt to Judy Winfree, who provided me with nearly everything I know about the history of Mary Willis Shelburne. I owe special thanks to Dr C. M. Bajetta, who translated some of the letters to members of the Poor Servants of Divine Providence in Verona, and who wrote the biography of Fr Luigi Pedrollo. Others who gave important help include Father Jerome Bertram Cong Orat, Father David Meconi SJ, Penelope Avery, Anthony Hardie, Ronald Bresland, John Coppack, Ron Humphrey, Martin Hesketh, Helena Scott, Mark Bide, Penelope Starr, Dr Alston McCaslin V, Dr Silas McCaslin, Philip G. Ryken, K. Scott Oliphint, Dabney Hart, Richard Furze, Nancy Macky, Keith Call, Isaac Gerwitz, Christian Rendel, Robert Trexler, Anthony Bott, Richard Haney, Don W King and George Musacchio.

There would not be many letters to include in this volume were it not for the Bodleian Library, and I am greatly indebted to Dr Judith Priestman and Colin Harris, who helped me use the resources of that wonderful institution. I thank David Brawn and Chris Smith of HarperCollins for their encouragement and for their immense labour in seeing this book through the press. Finally, while the faults of the book are entirely my own, I would have been afraid to embark on it at all without the help of my copy-editor, Steve Gove.

Walter Hooper

13 September 2006

Oxford

1 CL I, p. viii.

2Lewis wrote of this in detail in AMR , pp. 201-8.

3 SB] , ch. 13, p. 157.

4ibid.

6 SB] , ch. 13, p. 156.

7ibid., p. 160.

8 CL II, pp. 905-6.

9 Of This and Other Worlds , ed. Walter Hooper (London: Fount, 1984; HarperCollins, 2000), ‘It All Began with a Picture…’, p. 64.

10 CL II, p. 221, letter of 25 January 1938.

11ibid., p. xi.

12 Of This and Other Worlds , p. 64.

13ibid., ‘Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said’, pp. 57-8.

14Mrs Moore died at Restholme on 12 December 1951.

15See p. 66.

16See p. 150.

17Many of these letters are preserved in the Bodleian Library (MS. Eng. c. 5369).

18 The Spectator , 193 (1 October 1954), p. 405.

19Helen Gardner, ‘Clive Staples Lewis 1898-1963’, Proceedings of the British Academy , LI (1965), p. 425.

20ibid.

21Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography (London: Bles, 1974; rev. edn, HarperCollins, 2002), ch. 12, p. 340.

22See p. 268.

23See p. 1464.

24See p. 1429.

25 The Horse and His Boy (1954), ch. 11.

26See p. 834.

AMR = All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis 1922-27 , edited by Walter Hooper (1991)

BBC = Written Archive Centre, British Broadcasting Corporation

BERG = Berg Collection, New York Public Library

BF = Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis , edited by Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead (1982)

BOD = Bodleian Library, Oxford University

CAM = Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

CG = Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide (1996)

CL I = C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters , Vol. I: Family Letters 1905-1931 , edited by Walter Hooper (2000)

CL II = C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters , Vol. II: Books, Broadcasts and War 1931-1949 , edited by Walter Hooper (2004)

CP = C. S. Lewis, Collected Poems , edited by Walter Hooper (1994)

EC = C. S. Lewis, Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces , edited by Lesley Walmsley (2000)

HAR = Harvard University Library

L = Letters of C. S. Lewis , edited with a Memoir by W H. Lewis (1966); revised and enlarged edition edited by Walter Hooper (1988)

Lambeth Palace = Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth Palace, London

LP = unpublished ‘Lewis Papers’ or ‘Memoirs of the Lewis Family: 1850-1930’, 11 vols.

M = Magdalen College, Oxford

MC = Magdalene College, Cambridge

OUP = Oxford University Press, Oxford Oxford DNB = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , 60 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). There is also an online edition of this work

P = Private collection

PC = postcard

p.p. = per pro (through another). In this volume the abbreviation indicates letters signed by Warnie Lewis on behalf of his brother

Poems = C. S. Lewis, Poems , edited by Walter Hooper (London: Bles, 1964). All the poems in this volume are included in Collected Poems (CP)

PRIN = Princeton University Library, Princeton, New lersey

SBJ = C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (1955)

SLE = C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays , edited by Walter Hooper (1969)

T = Taylor University, Upland, Indiana

TEX = University of Texas at Austin

TS = typescript

UCL = University College London

UNC = Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

V = Congregation of the Poor Servants of Divine Providence, Verona, Italy

W = Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois

WHL = W. H. Lewis’s unpublished biography of his brother, ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’. The greater part of the narrative was brought together as a ‘Memoir’ and it was published with most of the letters as Letters to C. S. Lewis , edited with a Memoir by W. H. Lewis (1966). There are two typescripts of ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’, one in the Bodleian Library and one in the Wade Center