Wishing Upon a Narnian Star: Unboxing “The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis”

Posted on August 7, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson
Cover of 'The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis' by Brenton D. G. Dickieson, featuring an ornate design and surrounded by various stickers.

I don’t have a clear idea about how Austen and Dickens handled their social media platforms, but I suspect the videos of them unboxing their author’s copies were quite popular. I decided to join in the tradition and open “the box” on film, with my family there to celebrate.

After they’ve seen the reel (linked below), folks have been good-natured in laughing as I said, “look, it has my name on it … it has words in it … it smells like a book!”

Well, I’ve dreamed of being an “author” since childhood. I even wished upon the North Star from the roof of our heifer barn. I didn’t remember until much later that the Polaris of Narnia is the Spearhead–though I am not certain if it grants wishes. I would have to ask a centaur that kind of thing–and centaurs are so rare nowadays that we wouldn’t want to bother them with frivolous questions.

But the physical book is a thing, isn’t it? I have been a writer for many years, and I have authored hundreds of pieces. My work has been in books–even award-winning books of excellent design. The UPS guy laughed about the weight of the author’s copies box when he handed it to my wife.

A book itself, a tangible object, the book with the words on pages, bound in a cover–a book is a weighty thing. For me, unveiling this first copy is like going from being a writer to being an author.

In the end, the star I navigated by was not Polaris or the Spearhead–not the dream of authorship itself–but the gritty joy of writing, an unwavering commitment to good reading, and a cat’s stubbornness that I would finish this 15-year project.

Thanks to all who have helped and who support me, including the family behind the camera. More about that later. You can find details of the book here. The Kindle/ePub is out now, and the hardcover launch day in the US is Tues, Aug 11th. I’m hoping that’s Canada too, but it isn’t listed yet. See below for more.

And, in the tradition of my favourite 19th-century novelist, my unboxing video on Instagram!

What’s It All About?

What holds C.S. Lewis’s whole bookshelf together—Narnia, Mere Christianity, the letters, even the poetry most people forget? In The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis, Brenton Dickieson traces a secret thread: a cross-shaped, or cruciform, pattern of dying and rising that runs through everything Lewis wrote. For more than ten years, Dr. Dickieson has researched the “Shape” of C.S. Lewis’s vision of spiritual life. Now he has written a book that reads like a long conversation with a fellow pilgrim who has spent a life inside Lewis’s library.

How You Can Find the Book

No doubt these prices are all temporary. The hardcover list price is $35 USD, available Aug 11th.

Talk to your local librarian and see if your library can get The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis on the shelves. That way, you can enjoy it for free, and others may find it as well. There is a serendipity to library finds and indie bookstore encounters that Amazon just can’t kindle.

A QR code with a star symbol in the center, framed by a purple border.

I always appreciate it when you folks share my work on Social Media and in your own writing. Please continue to do so! Here’s my linktree with all of my accounts: https://linktr.ee/brentondickieson.

For reviews, journal editors can either fill out this form or request a review copy by contacting reviews.global@oup.com directly.

Writers, bloggers, magazine reviewers, literary critics, and journalists can also request a review copy. Fill out this form or request a review copy by contacting reviews.global@oup.com directly.

Teachers and professors can request a review copy or exam copy for use in upcoming classes. Follow this link for more info.

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Out on Kindle/ePub Today: The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Brenton Dickieson (and it’s a top-selling new release!)

Posted on July 28, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson

Though I still have not had the pleasure of unpacking a box of author’s copies, I am kind of jazzed to see that my OUP book, The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis, is out today on Kindle and ePub (Kobo, Nook, etc.).

And … as I check to ensure it has truly launched, I see that in the US, it is the #1 New Release in 20th Century Literary Criticism! Cool news, just ahead of T.S. Eliot and Muriel Spark. More “Launch Day Listing Nonsense” below.

If you like to scan a digital page from time to time, you can get your copy now! Kindle is on sale at Amazon in Canada for $21.99 CDN, and Indigo just dropped the Kobo price to $17.39 CDN.

Our friends south (and northwest) of the border have the best offer, perhaps. The American Kindle is only $13.19 USD! ($21.99 USD on Barnes & Noble). No doubt these prices are all temporary. The list price is $35 USD.

I hope it is available wherever you live. Since June, The Spiritual Imagination of CSL has been available in eBook by the chapter or as a whole: DOI: https://academic.oup.com/book/62998. Does anyone read books on Google Play? It’s likely there too! Is Apple books still a thing? Maybe, if so, it will be there somehow.

The hardcover should be available through your local bookstore on Aug 11 in Canada and the US (sometime this fall elsewhere).

And … remember what I said last time: Talk to your local librarian and see if your library can get The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis on the shelves. That way, you can enjoy it for free, and others may find it as well. There is a serendipity to library finds and indie bookstore encounters that Amazon just can’t kindle.

Some Launch Day Listing Nonsense

I really don’t know what the Amazon and Goodreads lists mean since the book is 5 minutes old. However, it was fun seeing “Top New Release” on my book–even if it is for the relatively obscure category of 20th-century Lit Crit. You can see the top new releases in this slideshow–once again, I’m ahead of T.S. Eliot, ahem!–and I’m on a couple of other lists of Christian Art and Literature.

Probably the weirdest of the lists that came my way today was the Goodreads “Narnia and Mordor Books” topped by Dorothy L. Sayers and Charles Williams–both more familiar with heaven, hell, and purgatory than either Narnia or Mordor. Still, there I am at #7 behind Joseph Laconte and right on the heels of Alister McGrath. As one does.

Anyway, nonsense but fun. The New York Times haven’t called yet.

How You Can Share the Book with Others

I always appreciate it when you folks share my work on Social Media and in your own writing. Please continue to do so!

Here’s my linktree with all of my accounts: https://linktr.ee/brentondickieson.

And… here are some ways you can support my work and maybe get a copy without paying.

Libraries

We walk down to our local library frequently, and I’m always bugging them at the Robertson Library on the UPEI campus. Here’s the secret: libraries order books. There are so many nonfiction books that librarians rely on feedback from their patrons to determine what the community needs. Request The Spiritual Imagination. You can get a copy to enjoy at no cost and then share it with everyone!

If you have access to a university library, ensure that the resource librarian for English, Literature, Spirituality Studies, and Religious Studies knows about this resource. Many libraries will get access through Oxford University Press online, but this is an inexpensive academic book that will be of endless help to scholars and students. Get them to order a copy for the shelves. And don’t forget your local Bible College, Seminary, and Liberal Arts College.

Reviews

Scholars and grad students know that they can get a comp copy of the upcoming text they are interested in by volunteering to be a reviewer for an Academic Journal. Reach out to your editor. If you are an editor, you can fill out this form or request a review copy by contacting reviews.global@oup.com directly.

Writers, bloggers, magazine reviewers, literary critics, and journalists can also request a review copy. Fill out this form or request a review copy by contacting reviews.global@oup.com directly.

Teachers and professors can request a review copy or exam copy for use in upcoming classes. Follow this link for more info.

I also hope to have 30% off discount codes for scholars, media, and writers, so reach out if you don’t have an editorial contact. Reach out to me if this is you: bdickieson@upei.ca.

What’s It All About?

With book sales exceeding 200 million copies, a billion-dollar film industry, and a bookshelf of critical, philosophical, and popular works, C.S. Lewis is at once the beloved author of The Chronicles of Narnia and a leading twentieth-century English-speaking Christian public intellectual. Given the sheer diversity of Lewis’s writing, what holds all this together? What is the beating heart of Lewis’ work?

Among C.S. Lewis scholars, there is near-unanimous agreement with British philosopher Owen Barfield’s claim that, “what Lewis thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything.” In The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis, Brenton D. G. Dickieson argues that what Lewis reveals throughout his writings is a cross-shaped, or cruciform, spirituality. As an instinctive and integrative writer of spiritual theology, Lewis believed that “death is at the root of the whole matter”—that God’s self-surrender in Christ through death on a cross and subsequent resurrection is the normative pattern for a healthy spiritual life. This death-and-resurrection pattern unites Lewis’s Christian thought and produces a hopeful and evocative spirituality that is embedded in his poetry and prose.

By reconsidering him as a spiritual theologian, Dickieson uncovers a six-point “Logic of Cruciformity” in Lewis’s apologetics that is embedded in narrative form throughout his other works. The shape of the cross is the shape of Lewis’s spiritual theology. With the “upsidedownedness” of childlike wonder, Lewis reveals what Dickieson calls a “Theology of the Small,” filled with “sacred paradoxes” and offering a hopeful, transformative invitation to spiritual life.

Posted in News & Links, Original Research, The C.S. Lewis Studies Series | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Book Announcement: The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Brenton Dickieson (and it’s on sale!)

Posted on July 15, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson

Dear friends, I am happy to announce the launch dates for my new book! The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis (OUP, 2026) is now available in eBook format, and it is on its way to bookshelves near you.

What holds C.S. Lewis’s whole bookshelf together—Narnia, Mere Christianity, the letters, even the poetry most people forget? In The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis, Brenton Dickieson traces a secret thread: a cross-shaped, or cruciform, pattern of dying and rising that runs through everything Lewis wrote. For more than ten years, Dr. Dickieson has researched the “Shape” of C.S. Lewis’s vision of spiritual life. Now he has written a book that reads like a long conversation with a fellow pilgrim who has spent a life inside Lewis’s library.

It is difficult for me to describe the long and meaningful tangle of pathways that lead to this moment. I’ve been playing with language and story ideas so long that I’ve put off sharing the good news. But it is time to invite you all to read this book we’ve made (and I’ll talk more about the “we” another time). So in this note, I’ll talk about how to get the book (on sale), how to help share the book, and what it’s all about.

How You Can Get the Book

Available Now in eBook by the chapter or as a whole: DOI: https://academic.oup.com/book/62998

Available July 28, 2026 on Kindle and Kobo

Available August 11, 2026 in Hardcover at your local Bookstore (here’s the Bookmark’s link: https://bookmarkreads.ca/item/FHRU2k7yiQs3EkMBB6kIJQ)

OUP Direct Ordering: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-spiritual-imagination-of-cs-lewis-9780197663080?cc=ca&lang=en&

How You Can Get the Book on Sale

I am always talking about connecting with your local, indie bookstores, who in turn support our artists and writers. The Bookmark in Charlottetown will be helping me with a launch this fall!

Knowing how much UPress books cost, I wanted to do something different with this project. When I negotiated my contract with OUP, we worked together to make it as accessible as possible (though I don’t know when the audiobook will be released). We have offered this book at the lowest possible price. There are some ways to pre-order The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis on sale, right now!

The Canadian Kindle price is so freakishly low that it might be an error, so Canadians should order now before it goes away!

The prices might change without warning. However, pre-ordering a book is an extremely effective way to help authors share their scholarship and artistry. It’s not about money–my contract has the lowest possible royalties. Rather, I would love to see the book go to second printing in paperback, which lowers the price even more!

How You Can Share the Book with Others

I always appreciate it when you folks share my work on Social Media and in your own writing. Please continue to do so!

Here’s my linktree with all of my accounts: https://linktr.ee/brentondickieson.

And… here are some ways you can support my work and maybe get a copy without paying.

Libraries

We walk down to our local library frequently, and I’m always bugging them at the Robertson Library on the UPEI campus. Here’s the secret: libraries order books. There are so many nonfiction books that librarians rely on feedback from their patrons to determine what the community needs. Request The Spiritual Imagination. You can get a copy to enjoy at no cost and then share it with everyone!

Talk to your local librarian and see if your library can get The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis on the shelves.

If you have access to a university library, ensure that the resource librarian for English, Literature, Spirituality Studies, and Religious Studies knows about this resource. Many libraries will get access through Oxford University Press online, but this is an inexpensive academic book that will be of endless help to scholars and students. Get them to order a copy for the shelves. And don’t forget your local Bible College, Seminary, and Liberal Arts College.

Reviews

Scholars and grad students know that they can get a comp copy of the upcoming text they are interested in by volunteering to be a reviewer for an Academic Journal. Reach out to your editor. If you are an editor, you can fill out this form or request a review copy by contacting reviews.global@oup.com directly.

Writers, bloggers, magazine reviewers, literary critics, and journalists can also request a review copy. Fill out this form or request a review copy by contacting reviews.global@oup.com directly.

Teachers and professors can request a review copy or exam copy for use in upcoming classes. Follow this link for more info.

I also hope to have 30% off discount codes for scholars, media, and writers, so reach out if you don’t have an editorial contact. Reach out to me if this is you: bdickieson@upei.ca.

What’s It All About?

With book sales exceeding 200 million copies, a billion-dollar film industry, and a bookshelf of critical, philosophical, and popular works, C.S. Lewis is at once the beloved author of The Chronicles of Narnia and a leading twentieth-century English-speaking Christian public intellectual. Given the sheer diversity of Lewis’s writing, what holds all this together? What is the beating heart of Lewis’ work?

Among C.S. Lewis scholars, there is near-unanimous agreement with British philosopher Owen Barfield’s claim that, “what Lewis thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything.” In The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis, Brenton D. G. Dickieson argues that what Lewis reveals throughout his writings is a cross-shaped, or cruciform, spirituality. As an instinctive and integrative writer of spiritual theology, Lewis believed that “death is at the root of the whole matter”—that God’s self-surrender in Christ through death on a cross and subsequent resurrection is the normative pattern for a healthy spiritual life. This death-and-resurrection pattern unites Lewis’s Christian thought and produces a hopeful and evocative spirituality that is embedded in his poetry and prose.

By reconsidering him as a spiritual theologian, Dickieson uncovers a six-point “Logic of Cruciformity” in Lewis’s apologetics that is embedded in narrative form throughout his other works. The shape of the cross is the shape of Lewis’s spiritual theology. With the “upsidedownedness” of childlike wonder, Lewis reveals what Dickieson calls a “Theology of the Small,” filled with “sacred paradoxes” and offering a hopeful, transformative invitation to spiritual life.

Posted in News & Links, Original Research, The C.S. Lewis Studies Series | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

What Makes the Montgomery Conference Awesome, with Allison Hudson and Caroline Jones (MaudCast S03E02)

Posted on June 5, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson

Hello kindred spirits! We’re back with another episode of the MaudCast, the podcast of the Lucy Maud Montgomery Institute. And today, we’re talking about the Conference.

Allison Hudson and Caroline Jones are two of the organizers of the next biennial L.M. Montgomery Institute conference (that’s every two years, not “biannual” as twice a year, like I say in the episode). LMMI26 is here in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, June 24-28, 2026—home for me, but a long-sought destination for many. The Montgomery conference is a highlight for so many artists, scholars, librarians, Montgomery community members, and avid readers of her work.

In this episode, we catch up on “the news”–my Island grandmother’s polite word for gossip–share some fond memories of past conferences, and give some hints about what’s to come.

Dr. Allison McBain Hudson is the current Visiting Scholar at the L.M. Montgomery Institute—or the LMMI, as we call it. Her Ph.D. from Dublin City University is on the significance of material culture in Montgomery’s novels, and in the episode, we talk about what “material culture studies” really means (you can hear my stumbling definition and Allison’s elegant correction). Originally from Alberta, Allison has lived in Ireland for nearly three decades, where she quilts, sews, walks dogs, and has two daughters with her husband, an Irish artist—which I’m sure has its own adventures! Allison is one of the keynote speakers at the conference, and a past contributor to A Pilgrim in Narnia (see her review of The Faithful Imagination). As a bonus, you can check out more about her work on “material culture” in a season 2 MaudCast.

Dr. Caroline E. Jones is a past LMMI Visiting Scholar and has published a host of essay anthologies and scholarly papers. Every time I hear Caroline give a talk, I am amazed by her creative mind. In this episode, we’ll find out more about her research, which, like Allison’s, looks more closely at Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon trilogy. Formerly a bookseller and full-time academic, Caroline currently works as an editor in Austin, Texas, USA. Caroline also has a credit here on A Pilgrim in Narnia as a moderator of an online panel discussing Emily of New Moon on its 100th birthday.

This episode brings together three countries—Dublin, Ireland, Prince Edward Island, Canada, and Texas, USA—Montgomery friends in conversation, even when there is an ocean and a continent in between. We hope you enjoy the episode—including the news that the most powerful Anne of my childhood, Megan Follows, will give a keynote talk (and I’m responding to her audiobook reading of Emily of New Moon here). To find out more about the June conference and our guests, check out this link. Local and online registration is open. More to come!

Farewell, Brenton (MaudCast Host)

You can find the MaudCast on Podbean, Spotify, and leading podcast platforms. See the full Show Notes and Credits on our Podbean host.

Links from this post:

2026 – L.M. Montgomery and Change
Full Video: Emily of New Moon Round Table with E. Holly Pike, Kate Sutherland, and Brenton Dickieson (Conversations about #LMMontgomery Series)
The Faithful Imagination, a Review by Allison McBain Hudson
Living in a World with Octobers: An Anne of Green Gables Greeting from Prince Edward Island
Full: My Experience of the L.M. Montgomery Institute Conference (L.M. Montgomery Series)
Posted in L.M. Montgomery, News & Links, The MaudCast | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

The Hundred Acre Wood: (Stuffed) Animals in Literature (The Plunge Podcast with Derek Holser)

Posted on May 18, 2026 by Brenton Dickieson

Happy spring Monday dear readers! I’m hardening off my tomato and pepper seedlings as I work on a plan to combat invasive Japanese beetles before they can shred my Bing Holla! cheery tree, which is now in flower. The days have grown longer, and my crop of dandelions thrives in what is generously called my “lawn.” A fat bee is humming from yellow to yellow on my lawn. The natural world calls as it wakens from winter slumber. It’s time to head back to the 100 Acre Wood.

What was your first exposure to Poohdom? How did Poohicity appear in your life? What was the earliest thump, thump, thump sound of Winnie-the-Pooh tumbling into your life?

For me, there were some Disney Pooh books lying around, and a little later, the Disney animated show appeared. What I first remember, though, was a reading of Winnie-the-Pooh on CBC radio when I was very little, sitting in the back of our Datsun on a weekend drive. The audio reading brought Mr. Shepherd’s drawings in Mr. Milne’s slim volumes to life for me. The pen-and-ink sketches filled with colour, as it were–an experience that came back to me when a late 90s audio adaptation appeared (though you can hear in the podcast below, I might have confused some of the actors).

Once again, I’ve had the privilege of joining Derek Holser on The Plunge Podcast. After meeting Derek at a George MacDonald conference at Yale, I joined him for his Tolkien’s Greatest Characters series, talking about Samwise Gamgee (for obvious reasons). Prompted by another guest in the “Animals in Literature” series, Derek invited me to talk about Winnie-the-Pooh. We chat about the characters–classic Pooh, fretful Piglet, lumpy Eeyore, and Rabbit, who can spell Tuesday–but I was particularly interested in the 100 Acre Wood as a fictional world.

The pod includes lots of nonsense, of course, and a good amount of fun. Some of this blue-sky chatter about rooted things, however, is heartwarming. I hope it echoes the tug of homely nostalgia that the original series of stories evoked in its readers.

And, of course, I talk about the Canadian connection! And you can see my punk son at 8 months sitting at the feet of Winnie’s statue–one of Canada’s roadside wonderlands. Direct link is here, and you can click YouTube or Spotify below the description. I hope you enjoy!

The Hundred Acre Wood: (Stuffed) Animals in Literature with Brenton Dickieson

Welcome to Episode Twelve in our Animals in Literature series. Today’s conversation features a fun, nostalgic, endearing discussion of Christopher Robin and his friends in The Hundred Acre Wood, created by A.A. Milne. Today’s guest is returning Plunge favorite and great friend, Brenton Dickieson. Brenton is a father, husband, friend, university lecturer, and freelance writer from Prince Edward Island, Canada.

As the author of more than 1,100 articles, blog posts, and reviews, Brenton has worked as a freelance author, columnist, and policy writer for Canadian magazines and the government of Prince Edward Island. As a theologian of literature, Brenton writes the popular website, A Pilgrim in Narnia, which explores the intersections of faith, fantasy, and fiction. With more than 1.1 million website hits and a yearly readership now exceeding 200,000, more than 8,000 social media followers, and significant networks within the scholarly and readerly worlds of C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, Brenton has a powerful platform for considering the literary, spiritual, and theological interest of some of our most famous world-builders, including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, L.M. Montgomery, and others.

Let’s Talk About Samwise Gamgee: Tolkien’s Greatest Characters on the Plunge Podcast with Derek Holser

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