Lost CS Lewis manuscript found in the Bodleian Library
A professor at Texas State University–San Marcos believes he has discovered all that exists of a book that JRR Tolkien and close friend CS Lewis intended to write together.
According to a letter Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher in 1944, he had planned to write a book with Lewis called Language and Human Nature.
Steven Beebe, Regents’ Professor and Chair of the Texas State Department of Communication Studies, found the text in a notebook in the Oxford University Bodleian Library. Both Tolkien and Lewis were faculty members at Oxford.
“What is exciting is that the manuscript includes some of Lewis’s best and most precise statements about the nature of language and meaning. Both Lewis and Tolkien wrote separately about language, communication, and meaning, but they published nothing collaboratively.” said Beebe.
Beebe found the fragment in a small notebook Lewis used. In the notebook were early fragments of The Magician’s Nephew and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, along with several unpublished thoughts and ideas.
“I was so surprised to find Lewis writing about language and meaning, using examples and illustrations not found in any of his published work. I knew I had discovered something interesting. But at the time, I didn’t know I had found something important.”
Tolkien and Lewis met in 1926 and became long-time friends, helping found the famous Inklings literary discussion group. Tolkien’s efforts were instrumental in converting the atheist Lewis to Christianity in 1931.
Posted: July 13th, 2009
Author: Lee
Categories: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien
Comments
It’s been found?!
I’ve been wanting to read the proposed book, or even the notes for it, for about twenty years–since I read Chad Walsh’s C.S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics, which mentions the plans of CSL and “his friend F.R.R. [sic] Tolkien” to write such a book. (Walsh’s book is dated 1949, and I believe was the first Lewis biography.) Just mentioned to somebody this weekend that I’d asked and asked and nobody even knew of any extant notes.
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