The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2

C. S. Lewis

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780061947216
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

C. S. Lewis was a prolific letter writer, and his personal correspondence reveals much of his private life, reflections, friendships, and the progress of his thought. This second of a three-volume collection contains the letters Lewis wrote after his conversion to Christianity, as he began a lifetime of serious writing. Lewis corresponded with many of the twentieth century's major literary figures, including J. R. R. Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers. Here we encounter a surge of letters in response to a new audience of laypeople who wrote to him after the great success of his BBC radio broadcasts during World War II -- talks that would ultimately become his masterwork, Mere Christianity.

Volume II begins with C. S. Lewis writing his first major work of literary history, The Allegory of Love, which established him as a scholar with imaginative power. These letters trace his creative journey and recount his new circle of friends, "The Inklings," who meet regularly to share their writing. Tolkien reads aloud chapters of his unfinished The Lord of the Rings, while Lewis shares portions of his first novel, Out of the Silent Planet. Lewis's weekly letters to his brother, Warnie, away serving in the army during World War II, lead him to begin writing his first spiritual work, The Problem of Pain.

After the serialization of The Screwtape Letters, the director of religious broadcasting at the BBC approached Lewis and the "Mere Christianity" talks were born. With his new broadcasting career, Lewis was inundated with letters from all over the world. His faithful, thoughtful responses to numerous questions reveal the clarity and wisdom of his theological and intellectual beliefs.

Volume II includes Lewis's correspondence with great writers such as Owen Barfield, Arthur C. Clarke, Sheldon Vanauken, and Dom Bede Griffiths. The letters address many of Lewis's interests -- theology, literary criticism, poetry, fantasy, and children's stories -- as well as reveal his relation ships with close friends and family. But what is apparent throughout this volume is how this quiet bachelor professor in England touched the lives of many through an amazing discipline of personal correspondence. Walter Hooper's insightful notes and compre hensive biographical appendix of the correspon dents make this an irreplaceable reference for those curious about the life and work of one of the most creative minds of the modern era.

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¹ CL I, letter to Arthur Greeves of 1 October 1931, p. 974.

² ibid., letter to Arthur Greeves of 18 October 1931, p. 977.

³ See Owen Barfield in the Biographical Appendix to CL I, pp. 979–82.

⁴ ‘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 ibid., p. 121.

⁶ ibid., pp. 121–2.

⁷ ‘Is Theology Poetry?’ Screwtape Proposes a Toast and Other Pieces (London: 1965; Fount, 1998), p. 37.

⁸ Letter to Mary Neylan, 29 January 1941, in this volume.

⁹ 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 See Janie King Moore in the Biographical Appendix to CL I.

¹¹ See Dame Maureen Dunbar of Hempriggs in the Biographical Appendix to CL I.

¹² See Edward Francis Courtenay ‘Paddy’ Moore in the Biographical Appendix to CLI.

¹³ Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography (London: Bles, 1974; rev. edn, 2002), ch. 2, p. 46.

¹⁴ see p. 496.

¹⁵ See p. 766.

¹⁶ ‘It All began with a Picture…’, Of This and Other Worlds, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Collins, 1984; Fount, 2000), p. 64.

¹⁷ ‘Christian Apologetics’, EC, p. 158.

¹⁸ ‘Version Vernacular’, The Christian Century, Vol. LXXV (31 December 1958),p. 515. Reprinted in EC, p. 779.

¹⁹ Letter to Canon John Beddow of 7 October 1945, p. 674.

²⁰ See p. 869.

²¹ Letter to Nancy Warner of 26 October 1963 quoted in Green and Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography, p. 415.

²² Letter to Walter Hooper of 5 April 2003.

¹ The Rev. Wilfrid Savage Thomas (1879–1959) took a BA from Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1900. Ordained in 1903 after a year at Wells Theological College, he was Curate of Great Marlow until 1906 and spent the next two years in Australia as Domestic Chaplain to the Bishop of Adelaide. He returned to Great Marlow, 1909–11, and was assigned Banbury with Grimsbury, 1911–13. After a further spell in Australia in 1915 as priest-in-charge of Mallala Mission, he was Curate of Amersham, 1916–18, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Lambeth, and Chaplain of St Thomas’s Hospital, London, 1918–23. Thomas became Vicar of Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry, in 1924 and remained there until 1935. He was subsequently Vicar of Adderbury with Milton, 1935–9.

² The grounds of The Kilns covered nine acres, and the Lewis brothers began planting trees and clearing pathways immediately after moving there.

³ The Rev. Edward Foord-Kelcey (1859–1934) matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1884. He read Theology at Cuddesdon College and was ordained in 1888. He was Curate of St Saviour, Leicester, 1887–92, Vicar of Quorn (or Quorndon), Leicestershire, 1892–1909, and Rector of Great Kimble, Buckinghamshire, 1909–26. He officiated in the Diocese of Oxford from 1927 until his death. His wife died shortly before the First World War. In a short biography of Foord-Kelcey (LP XI: 24–5), Lewis wrote: ‘A common love of Scott and Johnson was the ground on which we met…These, with Shakespeare and Carlyle, were the constant themes of his talk…. As a man of letters his range was not very wide–of poetry, for example, he knew little–nor was his judgement above the ordinary: but he was always worth listening to for the intensity of his gusto, and his chuckles and ecstatic repetition.’

⁴ There had been a footpath running across a field from Headington to Headington Quarry since 1804. The Oxford City Corporation wished to divert it, but many people who had been using the footpath for the whole of their lives, including Mr J. Snow, managed to have the City’s plan altered. See the letter from Mr Thomas, ‘Closing the Quarry Field Footpath’ in the Oxford Times(7 August 1931), p. 10.

⁵ Maureen Moore, the daughter of Janie King Moore, taught music at the Monmouth School for Girls, Monmouthshire, 1930–3. See Dame Maureen Dunbar of Hempriggs (1906–97) in the Biographical Appendix to CL I.

⁶ The nickname of Mrs Janie King Moore (1872–1951). See the Biographical Appendix to CL I.

⁷ George Robert Sabine Snow (189...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1931
• 1932
• 1933
• 1934
• 1935
• 1936
• 1937
• 1938
• 1939
• 1940
• 1941
• 1942
• 1943
• 1944
• 1945
• 1946
• 1947
• 1948
• 1949
• Biographical Appendix
• Searchable Terms
• About the Author and the Editor
• Credits
• Books by C. S. Lewis
• Copyright
• About the Publisher