24 See p. 1429.
25 The Horse and His Boy (1954), ch. 11.
26 See 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LP = unpublished ‘Lewis Papers’ or ‘Memoirs of the Lewis Family: 1850-1930’, 11 vols.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WHL = W. H. Lewis’s unpublished biography of his brother, ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’.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
During the spring of 1949 Lewis began dreaming of lions and by May 1949 he had written the first of the Chronicles of Narnia–The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This was hardly finished when he had the idea for the next story, Prince Caspian–or ‘A Horn in Narnia’ as it was first called. By the time this volume of letters opens Lewis was at work on yet another Narnian story, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’, the manuscript of which would be ready for Roger Lancelyn Green1 to read when he visited Lewis at the end of February 1950.2
TO JONATHAN FRANCIS ‘FRANK’ GOODRIDGE (P): 3
Magdalen College
Oxford [1 January 1950]
There have been very few pupils in my 26 years’ experience as a tutor for whom I can speak so confidently as I can for Mr. Frank Goodrich.4 As a scholar he has quality which his actual degree did not at all represent. The year in which he sat for his Final was one of strange surprises for many tutors about many pupils: but apart from that, his failure to do himself justice can be explained by two factors.
(1.) He is really too conscientious a student, too determined to get to the bottom of every question, to make an ideal examinee: good at probing and not at all good at advertising: incapable of ‘bluff’.
(2.) He gave rather more time than he could afford to his duties as secretary of a philosophical club.5 I saw a good deal of him in that capacity and it was his Minutes which first convinced me that he had attributes quite out of the ordinary. He could condense, and slightly popularise, the arguments of speakers (often very erudite) with less loss than any man I have ever known.
This satisfies me that he will be a good teacher: he might very well turn out to be one of the great teachers. His personal character won my respect from the beginning and this respect steadily increased during the time he was with me. He is one of the most disinterested—I think I could say one of the most selfless—men I have ever met: and, in spite of his good humour and patience, which are unfailing, I should not like to be the boy who tried to ‘rag’ him. If I had a son of my own there is no one to whom I would entrust him so gladly as to Mr. Goodrich.
C. S. Lewis
Fellow & Tutor of Magdalen
TO GEORGE ROSTREVOR HAMILTON (BOD): 6
Magdalen College
Oxford Jan 3./50
Dear Hamilton
O nodes cenaeque deum!,7 it was a glorious evening, and the underworld of that Hotel can claim as well as Pluto sunt altera nobis sideral.8 And now, to sweeten memory, firstly I find that Virgil does use planta