The book this companion is keyed to
This study companion follows the chapter structure of C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, first published in the United Kingdom in 1943:
- Full title: The Abolition of Man: or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools
- Author: C. S. Lewis
- First publisher: Oxford University Press, London (1943)
- Origin: The Riddell Memorial Lectures, delivered on three successive evenings (24–26 February 1943) at King’s College, Newcastle upon Tyne, then a constituent college of the University of Durham
- Epigraph: A line from Confucius’s Analects (Book II, chapter 16) appears on the title page
- Structure: Three lectures (Men Without Chests; The Way; The Abolition of Man) plus an appendix, “Illustrations of the Tao,” comparing maxims from many ethical traditions under eight headings: General Beneficence, Special Beneficence, Duties to Parents/Elders/Ancestors, Duties to Children and Posterity, Justice, Good Faith and Veracity, Mercy, and Magnanimity
- Genre / subjects: Christian philosophy · natural law & ethics · education · moral relativism (critique of)
- Reference record used for bibliographic identification: a 1996 Touchstone / Simon & Schuster paperback edition, ISBN 978-0-684-82371-3, held in the Internet Archive’s access-restricted lending collection — archive.org/details/abolitionofman00csle. UECF.NET also consulted the currently in-print HarperOne edition (ISBN 978-0-06-065294-4) for confirmation of the book’s continued commercial availability.
Copyright determination
The Abolition of Man is still under copyright and UECF.NET has no licence to reproduce its text. This is not a simple age calculation, so here is the reasoning in full:
- United States: Because the book was first published in the United Kingdom in 1943 and C. S. Lewis died in 1963 — meaning the work was still under copyright in its home country when the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (17 U.S.C. §104A) restored US copyright in qualifying foreign works — The Abolition of Man holds a full US copyright term of 95 years from first publication, regardless of whether a US renewal was ever separately filed. That places US public-domain entry at 1 January 2039.
- United Kingdom: UK copyright runs for the author’s life plus 70 years. Lewis died on 22 November 1963, so the book remains under UK copyright through the end of 2033, entering the public domain on 1 January 2034.
- Rights holder: The literary estate is controlled by the C. S. Lewis Company Ltd; current trade editions in the United States are published under the HarperOne / HarperCollins imprint.
- The Internet Archive item referenced above sits in a controlled-digital-lending, access-restricted collection — it can be borrowed there under the Archive’s own access terms, but it is not a freely downloadable or public-domain text. UECF.NET has not borrowed that scan, bypassed any access restriction, downloaded restricted files by unauthorised means, or substituted an unauthorised copy from elsewhere. UECF.NET is also aware that an unauthorized, uncontrolled scan of this book circulates on some file-sharing and archive sites; that copy was not used in any way in preparing this page.
Because the full text cannot legally be reproduced here, this page and the rest of the study companion instead provide: the book’s title, author, and verified bibliographic information; an original UECF.NET description of the book; its table of contents; a link to the legitimate Internet Archive record for readers who wish to borrow it there; clear copyright and source attribution (this page); and, for each chapter, original UECF.NET summaries, themes, Scripture cross-references, and study questions rather than Lewis’s own wording.
What you are reading elsewhere on this site is an original UECF.NET Web Book / Study Companion. None of the summarising prose on the chapter pages is Lewis’s own wording, and this companion does not fabricate quotations from the book — it contains none. Readers who want Lewis’s actual words should read the book itself, from a library, a bookseller, or the Internet Archive’s lending copy.
How this web edition was produced
UECF.NET used publicly available bibliographic sources — the Internet Archive catalogue record, standard reference works on C. S. Lewis, the published table of contents, and secondary scholarship on the book’s argument and reception — to establish the facts stated above. The explanatory content on every chapter page was written by UECF.NET for this study companion. We are responsible for the web presentation, navigation, search, and reading interface; C. S. Lewis and his estate are responsible for the book itself.
Scripture quotations
Scripture quoted on these pages is the King James Version (public domain). Lewis’s own discussion of Scripture and world religions in the printed book is not reproduced.
Corrections
If you notice an inaccuracy in a bibliographic detail, date, or attribution on this page, please write to info@uecf.net.