Walter Hooper - C. S. Lewis - A Biography

FULLY REVISED & EXPANDED EDITION

HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins Publishers 2002

First published by Collins 1974

© Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper 1974

Fully revised and expanded edition © Richard Lancelyn Green

(Literary Estate of Roger Lancelyn Green)

and Walter Hooper 2002

Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006281641

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Cover

Title Page C.S. LEWIS A BIOGRAPHY FULLY REVISED & EXPANDED EDITION

Copyright

Preface to the Revised Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Abbreviations

Prologue – Ancestry

1. Early Days

2. Oxford: The War and After

3. The Young Don

4. Conversion

5. Christian Scholar and Allegorist

6. Inklings and Others

7. Into the of Arbol

8. Talk of the Devil

9. ‘Mere Christianity’

10. The Crusading Intellect

11. Through the Wardrobe

12. Surprised by Joy

13. Marriage

14. ‘The Term is Over’

Index

About the Author

About the Publisher

Even while Roger Lancelyn Green and I were writing this biography we knew it would someday need revising. C.S. Lewis was a prolific letter-writer and, since the book was published in 1974, many new letters have come to light. Numerous reminiscences by former students and others have also been published since that time. Besides this, a new generation of Lewis readers was coming along, and we knew that, besides incorporating much new material into our book, certain adjustments in the portrayal of Lewis and his world would be needed.

It is a matter of great sadness to me that Roger and I were not able to work on this new edition of the biography together. Roger Lancelyn Green died on 8 October 1987, and I have had to revise it by myself. Even so, I do not think my old friend would find it a very different book from the one we wrote together. We expected further information to come to light about, among other things, the Inklings, Lewis’s election to a chair at Cambridge, and his marriage to Joy Davidman, and this has meant the book has ‘grown’ by two additional chapters. Still, while I have been the sole reviser, this new edition developed out of plans Roger Lancelyn Green and I made together, and it remains as much his book as mine. We were sorry our original publisher had an aversion to footnotes; I know Roger would be glad to see references to all published and unpublished writings given in the new edition.

C.S. Lewis’s beloved brother, Warnie, died shortly before the first edition of the biography was published. If he were still alive I would thank him again for the help and encouragement he gave us. The extended treatment of the Inklings in this revised biography owes much to Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis , ed. Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead (1982). I am grateful, as well, to the C.S. Lewis Company for allowing me to quote so extensively from the unpublished letters and papers of C.S. Lewis.

Many others have helped with this new book. I owe particular thanks to my co-author’s son, Richard Lancelyn Green, for sharing his father’s thoughts on C.S. Lewis and helping me in a hundred ways. Of what Lewis called ‘unambiguous debts’ those to whom I owe the most are Dr Francis Warner, Professor Emrys Jones, Dr Barbara Everett, Douglas Gresham, Dr A.J. Reyes, Dr Jeremy Dyson, Professor James Como, Dr Judith Priestman of the Bodleian Library, and my copy-editor, Steve Gove. I am grateful to Michael Ward and Scott Johnson for helping with the proofs. Finally, while this biography continues to be dedicated to C.S. Lewis and W.H. Lewis – Jack and Warnie – I offer my share in the revised book to Roger Lancelyn Green.

WALTER HOOPER

To write the biography of a man of genius as many-sided as C.S. Lewis is a daunting task, and it has not been undertaken lightly. His ideal biographer would have to be at once a Classical and English scholar, a theologian, a philosopher, an expert on fantasy, science fiction and children’s books – and no one but Lewis himself possessed all these qualifications in sufficient degree.

The two of us who have collaborated in the present volume fall far short of his learning, even in our own subjects: Walter Hooper is a theologian who has read English; Roger Lancelyn Green is an English scholar who has written fantasy and children’s books – both of us know and love the classical lands and have studied their literature; neither of us is a philosopher.

Why, then, are we undertaking this book? As early as May 1953 Lewis suggested to Roger Lancelyn Green that he should one day undertake his biography: when asked by his publisher Jocelyn Gibb of Geoffrey Bles Ltd to write a more formal autobiography than Surprised by Joy , Lewis replied: ‘Oh, no, but when I’m dead I suppose Roger will write my biography and Jock will publish it.’ And during the last six months of his life he was apologizing to Roger for giving Walter material which he might have thought was his special perquisite as chosen biographer.

Under these circumstances when we were approached by several of Lewis’s closest friends, including Jock Gibb, and supported by Warren Lewis, it seemed our duty, as it was our pleasure, to accept the honour, however frightening.

Our particular qualifications were fairly evenly balanced. Green had attended Lewis’s lectures, been his pupil for a B.Litt. course, and later became his friend at the time when the Narnian books were being written – a friendship that grew closer with time and with shared interests and experiences, culminating in the visit to Greece in 1960; he had also written the Bodley Head Monograph on Lewis which its subject had read in manuscript and approved, though usually averse to books about himself or other living authors.