Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949

The letters in Volume I were addressed primarily to family members or close friends, and because most were very important in Lewis’s life I felt I should provide substantial biographies of them in a Biographical Appendix. During the period covered by Volume II Lewis was writing to a greatly enlarged circle of correspondents, and I have included substantial biographies of close friends, such as Sister Penelope, as well as shorter biographies of associates and various prominent or otherwise interesting people whose details were too long to be included merely as footnotes.

During the forty years I have been editing the writings of C. S. Lewis I have rarely needed so much help as I have with this volume. It is one thing to edit a single ‘C. S. Lewis’, quite another to edit three! I make the claim Lewis made in The Allegory of Love—that of standing on the shoulders of giants. The first is Dr Francis Warner who was Lewis’s last pupil, and whom Lewis described as ‘the best mannered man of his generation I have ever met’.

(#ulink_4720e099-19d5-51b1-93b9-3bdb10bd87ce) Nothing could be truer, and no one has given me as much encouragement as he. Other giants are Professor Emrys Jones and Dr Barbara Everett who are responsible for identifying most of Lewis’s quotations from English literature.

Lewis’s friends often asked him to criticize their work, and this volume includes a number of his replies. It is astonishing how generous he was with his time. I was unsure whether to include such letters, especially if, as in the case of that to J. A. Chapman of 6 July 1949, the composition in question was never published. Dr Warner and the others thought I should. Dr Everett opened my eyes to an aspect of Lewis’s generosity I had not considered before. Regarding Lewis’s letter to J. A. Chapman, she wrote in April 2003:

(#ulink_db5d85e7-ebe5-599e-a5bc-3b368d20020c)

What is remarkable about the letter is his gentlemanly kindness, something more than courtesy, and the fact that he is telling the exact truth. You couldn’t have a better ‘report’ in the sense that it is terribly truthful and terribly gentle with it…This is a sort of model…of how to write nicely about a book which the reader knows is unpublishable, not to say unreadable. You must publish it!

Another on whose shoulders I often stand is Dr A. T. Reyes, the Classics scholar, whom I have relied on for helping with Lewis’s Greek and Latin quotations since I began work on the Collected Letters.

My debts are very great, and I owe good words to those who have helped in numerous and valuable ways. They include Miss Priscilla Tolkien, Raphaela Schmid, Professor James Como, Professor G. B. Tennyson, Dr John Walsh, Dr Richard Mullen, Dr James Munson, and Dr Robin Darwall-Smith, archivist of Magdalen College and University College, who provided copies of the Lewis letters in Magdalen College Library. Mrs Valerie Eliot graciously supplied me with copies of Lewis’s letters to her husband, while Dr Edwin W. Brown donated copies of the letters to Mary Neylan and others. Laurence Harwood, Lewis’s godson, gave valuable help with the letters to the Harwood family. I am indebted to Mrs Anne Al-Shahi for helping with the biography of her grandfather, E. R. Eddison. Thanks to Madame Eliane Tixier and Dr René Tixier, to Dr David L. Neuhouser and Taylor University, Upland, Indiana, for providing copies of letters to Lady Freud and her mother, and my warmest thanks to Lady Freud for annotating those letters. Mrs Jacquie Kavanagh of the Written Archives Centre of the BBC provided copies of Lewis’s letters to the BBC, Princeton University Library donated copies of the letters to Paul Elmer More, and Professor Brian Murdoch drew my attention to the letters to Eliza Marian Butler in the London University Germanic Institute. I am grateful to Mrs Madeleine F. Stebbins for giving the Bodleian Library the letter to her husband H. Lyman Stebbins, the late Dorothy Robinson who gave the Bodleian the letter to her father, Canon John Beddow, and Lewis’s former pupil, Harry Blamires, for help with Lewis’s letters to him. Thanks to Dr Christopher Mitchell of the Wade Center for providing copies of the Charles Williams letters, and Tracy Fleischman and the University of Texas at Austin for copies of the letters to Herbert Palmer. Dr Andrew Cuneo helped me type the letters in this volume.

There seems no end to my debts—which include thanks to William Griffin, Aidan Mackey, Dr C. M. Bajetta, Dr Don W. King, George J. Houlé, Father Robert Byrne of the Oxford Oratory, Dr David Downing, with particular thanks to my friends Michael Ward, Richard Jeffery and Scott Johnson for proof-reading this volume. Dr Judith Priestman and Colin Harris of the Bodleian Library know how many reasons I have to be grateful to them. There would have been no volume of letters without the encouragement of David Brawn of HarperCollinsPublishers, and my copy-editor, Steve Gove, who is responsible for much of the care that has gone into the editing of this second volume of Lewis’s Collected Letters. The best thing of all was getting to know well so many people who share my admiration for the author of this book.

Walter Hooper

22 November 2003

Oxford

1 (#ulink_77fe71a9-b24d-5955-a818-81e0e4fa627e)CL I, letter to Arthur Greeves of 1 October 1931, p. 974.

2 (#ulink_77fe71a9-b24d-5955-a818-81e0e4fa627e) ibid., letter to Arthur Greeves of 18 October 1931, p. 977.

3 (#ulink_18bca3a9-653a-5bb5-80ee-176a2a8dcc6f) See Owen Barfield in the Biographical Appendix to CL I, pp. 979–82.

4 (#ulink_b3a10fc5-90e6-50e8-a67b-aa081e798526) ‘The Five C. S. Lewises’, Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis, ed. G. B. Tennyson (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), pp. 120–1.

5 (#ulink_fc415dc8-47c7-5c7f-808d-5c5ea3be6325) ibid., p. 121.

6 (#ulink_cf5d0c65-f15e-5bea-bbc9-c11f2dca0408) ibid., pp. 121–2.

7 (#ulink_1303469c-05a4-582b-b039-612a46f18f70) ‘Is Theology Poetry?’ Screwtape Proposes a Toast and Other Pieces (London: 1965; Fount, 1998), p. 37.

8 (#ulink_1303469c-05a4-582b-b039-612a46f18f70) Letter to Mary Neylan, 29 January 1941, in this volume.

9 (#ulink_32fc7c59-781e-5eda-9dbe-8709d4908397) Charles Wrong, ‘A Chance Meeting’, C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences, ed. James T. Como (1979; new edn, 1992), pp. 109–10.

10 (#ulink_35f0f34c-0310-5798-9825-e81ca4be2c87) See Janie King Moore in the Biographical Appendix to CL I.

11 (#ulink_35f0f34c-0310-5798-9825-e81ca4be2c87) See Dame Maureen Dunbar of Hempriggs in the Biographical Appendix to CL I.

12 (#ulink_35f0f34c-0310-5798-9825-e81ca4be2c87) See Edward Francis Courtenay ‘Paddy’ Moore in the Biographical Appendix to CL I.

13 (#ulink_4dfe1910-6cd2-5d22-9969-03081b70075a) Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography (London: Bles, 1974; rev. edn, 2002), ch. 2, p. 46.

14 (#ulink_4dfe1910-6cd2-5d22-9969-03081b70075a) see p. 496.

15 (#ulink_b70c8095-d532-575c-af3b-d82068fe0373) See p.766.

16 (#ulink_fd4f6ead-8ebc-5dc0-96b9-69e8b826a648) ‘It All began with a Picture…’, Of This and Other Worlds, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Collins, 1984; Fount, 2000), p. 64.

17 (#ulink_36192e02-3509-58e4-9168-aee64ef89d00) ‘Christian Apologetics’,. EC, p. 158.

18 (#ulink_13a0bdfd-6138-5ba5-ad1b-832dc929c264) ‘Version Vernacular’, The Christian Century, Vol. LXXV (31 December 1958), p. 515. Reprinted in EC, p. 779.

19 (#ulink_13a0bdfd-6138-5ba5-ad1b-832dc929c264) Letter to Canon John Beddow of 7 October 1945, p. 674.

20 (#ulink_c58932eb-0731-5af7-850d-1fe88f250fcb) See p. 869.

21 (#ulink_714ec24d-85b3-506f-92cb-aaf08c40ca8d) Letter to Nancy Warner of 26 October 1963 quoted in Green and Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography, p. 415.

22 (#ulink_e8b5869d-130b-5f14-90ee-b7cba5240361) Letter to Walter Hooper of 5 April 2003.

ABBREVIATIONS (#u9c47d65c-00f5-53d1-b288-9095cdf4355d)

AMR = All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis 1922–1927, edited by Walter Hooper (1991)

BBC = Written Archive Centre, British Broadcasting Corporation

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

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

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

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)

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

LU = London University Germanic Institute

M = Magdalen College, Oxford

OUP = Oxford University Press, Oxford

P = Private collection

Prin = Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey