Appendix 1: For Further Reading
Appendix 1
For Further Reading
The best biographies of Lewis are the following:
Jacobs, Alan, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis (London: SPCK, 2005).
McGrath, Alister E., C.S. Lewis – A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013).
Sayer, George, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2005).
Works about Lewis that are relevant to this book follow:
Aeschliman, Michael D., The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).
Carnell, Corbin Scott, Bright Shadow of Reality: Spiritual Longing in C.S. Lewis (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999).
Carpenter, Humphrey, The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981).
Downing, David C., Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005).
Duriez, Colin, C.S. Lewis: A Biography of Friendship (Oxford: Lion Books, 2013).
Glyer, Diana, The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2007).
Heck, Joel D., Irrigating Deserts: C.S. Lewis on Education (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 2005).
Hooper, Walter, C.S. Lewis: The Companion and Guide (London: HarperCollins, 2005).
MacSwain, Robert, and Michael Ward (eds), The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Markos, Louis, On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis (Chicago: Moody, 2012).
McGrath, Alister E., The Intellectual World of C.S. Lewis (Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
Meilander, Gilbert, The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C.S. Lewis (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).
Nicholi, Armand M., The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life (New York: Free Press, 2002).
Ward, Michael, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Williams, Rowan D., The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia (London: SPCK, 2013).
Editions of works by Lewis referenced in this work follow:
The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
The Chronicles of Narnia, 7 vols (London: HarperCollins, 2002).
The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, ed. Walter Hooper, 3 vols (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2004–6).
Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, ed. Lesley Walmsley (London: HarperCollins, 2000).
An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
The Four Loves (London: HarperCollins, 2002).
A Grief Observed (London: HarperCollins, 1994). [Originally published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk.]
Mere Christianity (London: HarperCollins, 2002).
The Problem of Pain (London: HarperCollins, 2002).
Surprised by Joy (London: HarperCollins, 2002).
Chapter 1: The Grand Panorama: C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life
Lewis sets out the ability of Christianity to make sense of things at several points in his works. The best starting point is Mere Christianity, especially Book 1, chapters 1–4, and Book 3, chapter 10.
The essay ‘Is theology poetry?’ repays study:
‘Is theology poetry?’, in Essay Collection, 10–21.
For a discussion of how Lewis came to discover Christianity, see the following:
Downing, David C., The Most Reluctant Convert: C.S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002).
McGrath, Alister E., C.S. Lewis – A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013), 131–59.
Chapter 2: ‘Old Friends to Trust’: C.S. Lewis on Friendship
Lewis’s most extended discussion of friendship is found in the fourth chapter of The Four Loves.
For the best study of the Inklings, see the following:
Carpenter, Humphrey, The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends (London: Allen & Unwin, 1978).
For the way in which the Inklings worked, see the following:
Glyer, Diana, The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2007).
For reflections on the significance of the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien, see the following:
Duriez, Colin, C.S. Lewis: A Biography of Friendship (Oxford: Lion Books, 2013).
Jacobs, Alan, ‘The End of Friendship’, in Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 128–36.
For an assessment of Lewis’s approach to friendship and love, see the following:
Leiva-Merikakis, Erasmo, Love’s Sacred Order: The Four Loves Revisited (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000).
Chapter 3: A Story-Shaped World: C.S. Lewis on Narnia and the Importance of Stories
To get the most out of this chapter, you should read the following books:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
On the writing and themes of Narnia, see the following:
Brown, Devon, Inside Narnia: A Guide to Exploring ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005).
Downing, David C., Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005).
Jacobs, Alan, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis (London: SPCK, 2005).
Williams, Rowan D., The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia (London: SPCK, 2012).
Chapter 4: The Lord and the Lion: C.S. Lewis on Aslan and the Christian Life
To get the most out of this chapter, you should read the following books (in this order):
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Magician’s Nephew
The Last Battle
Other works that you may find helpful are the following:
Alexander, Joy, ‘ “The Whole Art and Joy of Words”: Aslan’s Speech in the Chronicles of Narnia’, Mythlore 91 (2003): 37–48.
Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Aslan and the New Morality’, Religious Education 67, no. 6 (1972): 419–29.
Markos, Louis, On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis (Chicago: Moody, 2012).
Williams, Rowan D., The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 49–111.
Chapter 5: Talking about Faith: C.S. Lewis on the Art of Apologetics
Lewis’s best apologetic work is Mere Christianity, which is an edited version of his Broadcast Talks given for the BBC during the Second World War. I especially recommend that you read its first five chapters, which set out Lewis’s version of the ‘argument from morality’.
On Lewis’s approach to apologetics, see the following:
McGrath, Alister E., ‘Reason, Experience, and Imagination: Lewis’s Apologetic Method’, in The Intellectual World of C.S. Lewis (Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 129–46.
Walsh, Chad, C.S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics (New York: Macmillan, 1949). This is a classic study, which first introduced many Americans to Lewis, and is still valuable.
Ward, Michael, ‘The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best: C.S. Lewis on Imagination and Reason in Apologetics’, in Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition, ed. Andrew Davison (London: SCM Press, 2012), 59–78.
Lewis has had a very significant impact on recent Christian apologetics, as can be seen from the following works:
McGrath, Alister E., Mere Apologetics: How to Help Seekers and Skeptics Find Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2012).
Sire, James W., A Little Primer on Humble Apologetics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006).
Wright, N.T., Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (London: SPCK, 2010).
Chapter 6: A Love of Learning: C.S. Lewis on Education
Lewis’s views on the shortcomings of modern education are set out particularly clearly in The Abolition of Man, especially its first chapter.
His essay ‘On the Reading of Old Books’ is a classic, and well worth reading. See Lesley Walmsley (ed.), Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces (London: HarperCollins, 2000), 438–43.
For Lewis’s career as an educationalist, see the following:
McGrath, Alister E., C.S. Lewis – A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013), 161–90.
For Lewis’s views on education and their contemporary relevance, see the following:
Heck, Joel D., Irrigating Deserts: C.S. Lewis on Education (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 2005).
Chapter 7: Coping with Suffering: C.S. Lewis on the Problem of Pain
Lewis’s views on pain and suffering are best studied from these two works:
The Problem of Pain
A Grief Observed
Other works that you may find helpful:
Keller, Timothy, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013).
McGrath, Alister E., ‘The Cross, Suffering, and Theological Bewilderment: Reflections on Martin Luther and C.S. Lewis’, in Mere Theology: Christian Faith and the Discipleship of the Mind (London: SPCK, 2010), 39–50.
Root, Jerry, C.S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009).
Ward, Michael, ‘On Suffering’, in The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, ed. Robert MacSwain and Michael Ward (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 203–19.
Chapter 8: ‘Further Up and Further In’: C.S. Lewis on Hope and Heaven
For Lewis’s views on heaven and the Christian hope, you should read the following:
Mere Christianity, Book 3, chapter 10.
Miracles, chapter 16.
‘The Weight of Glory’, in Lesley Walmsley (ed.), Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces (London: HarperCollins, 2000), 96–106.
Other works that you may find helpful are the following:
Connolly, Sean, Inklings of Heaven: C.S. Lewis and Eschatology (Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2007).
Edwards, Michael, ‘C.S. Lewis: Imagining Heaven’, in Literature and Theology 6 (1992): 107–24.
Urang, Gunnar, Shadows of Heaven: Religion and Fantasy in the Writing of C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and J.R.R. Tolkien (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1971).
Willis, John Randolph, Pleasures Forevermore: The Theology of C.S. Lewis (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1983).