9. Walter Hooper, Past Watchful Dragons: A Guide to C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (Glasgow: Collins, 1979), 56.
10. See: Elizabeth Anscome, “C. S. Lewis’s Rewrite of Chapter III of Miracles,” M. Roger White, Judith Wolfe and Brendan N. Wolfe ed. “C. S. Lewis & His Circle: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 15–23.
11. Diana. P. Glyer, The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2007).
12. Glyer, The Company They Keep.
13. Colin Duriez, The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien and Their Circle (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2015), 78.
14. Glyer, The Company They Keep, 146.
15. J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter to Christopher Tolkien, November 29, 1944, Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter with Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 105.
16. Tolkien, Letters, 105.
←xxiii | xxiv→
17. C. S. Lewis, Letter to Sister Penelope, January 12, 1950, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950–1963, ed. Walter Hooper (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2007), 6.
18. Lewis, Collected Letters III, 6.
19. C. S. Lewis, Fern Seed and Elephants: And Other Essays on Christianity, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Collins, Fontana, 1975), 58.
20. Walter Hooper, Past Watchful Dragons, 56.
21. Beebe, “C. S. Lewis on Language and Meaning; C. S. Lewis,” Language and Human Nature, VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review 27 (2010), 15.
22. C. S. Lewis, Letter to Albert Lewis, July 29, 1927, Collected Letters, Vol. I: Family Letters 1905–1931, ed. Walter Hooper (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2004), 713.
23. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man: Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), 9.
←xxiv | xxv→
This book has been an important part of my life for more than a decade. I have many people to thank for their encouragement, ideas, support, and suggestions.
Several people spent many hours reading the manuscript and offered detailed comments, affirmations, corrections, and suggestions. Although all errors are mine, I benefited from the generous offering of wise counsel from many people: Diana Ivy (the first person I trusted to read this book offered unswerving encouragement), Joel Heck (whose knowledge of Lewis was invaluable), Jerry Root (a master communicator and Lewis scholar), Michael Ward (whose knowledge of Lewis is unbounded), Andrew Lazo (who has a considerable gift with words), Will Vaus (who helped me fine-tune my ideas), Karen Black (an astonishingly gifted proofreader), Greg Anderson (who was especially helpful with Chapter 6), William O’Flaherty (who helped confirm the validity of my Lewis quotes) and Susan Beebe (editor extraordinaire) each offered invaluable comments, critiques, and encouragement after carefully reading drafts of the manuscript. Thank you for the countless ways you made this a better book.
Several Oxford friends offered support, ideas, encouragement and a listening ear as I’ve developed ideas for the book.
←xxv | xxvi→
• Walter Hooper, a dear friend and the pre-eminent C. S. Lewis scholar in the world, offered enthusiastic encouragement, ideas, support, suggestions, inspiration, loan of manuscripts, and Lewis handwriting expertise. Thank you, Walter, for being such an important friend and inspiration to me.
• Priscilla Tolkien, a good and wise friend, offered her support, insights, and much appreciated encouragement.
• Jacob Imam is a good friend and brilliant scholar who offered generous support for my work both in Oxford and during happy visits to Texas.
• Colin Duriez, an outstanding C. S. Lewis scholar, offered valued advice and encouragement.
• Jill and Peter Collett, and their talented daughters Clemi and Katie, are cherished friends I’ve known for more than a quarter of a century. They offered ongoing love, support and enthusiastic encouragement during many visits to our beloved Oxford.
I owe much to many C. S. Lewis scholars for their ideas, information, and meticulous scholarship that appear in endnotes in this book and helped shape many of the ideas presented. Special thanks go to the following scholars:
• Terry Lindvall and his excellent dissertation C. S. Lewis’ Theory of Communication was invaluable in helping me clarify my ideas about Lewis and communication.
• Greg Anderson provided friendship, joyful conversations, time in London hunting for Lewis first editions, and brilliant published scholarship about C. S. Lewis and rhetoric.
• Diana Pavlac Glyer provided support, encouragement, and outstanding scholarship that helped me solve a decades-old literary mystery. She is a role model for all Lewis scholars.
• The late Bruce Edwards offered his friendship, rich conversation, and outstanding published Lewis scholarship. I miss him and his enthusiastic support.
• Don King helped interpret Lewis’s handwriting, confirmed my discovery of C. S. Lewis poems, and offered much appreciated encouragement and support.
• Charlie Starr provided invaluable help in interpreting Lewis’s handwriting and offering support and encouragement.
• Andrew Lazo, who, in addition to carefully reading the manuscript, spent time with me in golden hours of friendship chasing after Lewis life details.
←xxvi | xxvii→
• Jerry Root, who not only read the manuscript, provided copious notes, and wrote the masterful Foreword, but was transformational in helping me develop as a Lewis researcher. I will always be grateful for his enduring friendship, love, and presence in my life.
I thank my editor at Peter Lang, Erika Hendrix, for her support of this project, excellent suggestions, and skilled editorial guidance.
The staff at the University of Oxford Bodleian Library provided outstanding support and expertise. Specifically, I thank:
• Judith Priestman, librarian and curator of Lewis manuscripts and papers, provided professional support and encouragement. Her personal presentation of original Lewis manuscripts was always a highlight for me and my students who visited