The book this companion is keyed to
This study companion follows the chapter structure of C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, first published in the United Kingdom in 1945:
- Title: The Great Divorce
- Author: C. S. Lewis
- First publisher: Geoffrey Bles, London (1945)
- First US publisher: Macmillan, New York (1946)
- Prior serialization: as “Who Goes Home?” in the Anglican newspaper The Guardian, 1944–1945
- Structure: An authorial Preface followed by fourteen numbered, untitled chapters
- Genre / subjects: Christian allegory · theological fantasy · Future life · Good and evil · Heaven · Hell
- Reference scan used for bibliographic identification: a Collier Books paperback edition (1984), 136 pages, ISBN 978-0-02-086890-3, held in the Internet Archive’s access-restricted, print-disabled lending collection — archive.org/details/greatdivorce00lewi
Copyright determination
The Great Divorce 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: The book was first published in the United Kingdom in 1945. Under 17 U.S.C. §304 and the Uruguay Round Agreements Act's restoration of copyright in qualifying foreign works, a work first published abroad in 1945 by an author who died in 1963 (long after the work would have needed to fall out of copyright in its home country to escape restoration) holds a full US copyright term of 95 years from first publication, regardless of whether a separate US renewal was ever filed. That places US public-domain entry at 1 January 2041.
- 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.
- Canada: Canadian copyright historically ran for the author’s life plus 50 years, which would have placed The Great Divorce in the Canadian public domain from 1 January 2014. Canada extended its general copyright term to life plus 70 years at the end of 2022, but that extension did not revive works whose copyright had already expired under the old rule — so this book appears to remain public domain in Canada specifically, which is why some Canada-based sites (such as FadedPage) host the full text there. UECF.NET is a US-based ministry publishing from the United States and follows US and UK copyright law, under which the book remains protected, so this Canadian status does not authorize republication here.
- 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, print-disabled 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.
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 accurate 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 the Preface and every chapter, original UECF.NET summaries, themes, characters, 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's bibliography and on the history of Canadian and US/UK copyright terms, and independently published chapter-by-chapter study guides consulted only for factual plot structure (which characters appear in which chapter) — to establish the facts stated above and on the chapter pages. The explanatory prose on every page was written by UECF.NET for this study companion; it is not copied or closely paraphrased from any single source. 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), chosen by UECF.NET for its thematic connection to each chapter. Lewis’s own use of Scripture and theology in the printed book is not reproduced.
Corrections
If you notice an inaccuracy in a bibliographic detail, date, plot fact, or attribution on this page, please write to info@uecf.net.