This video brings together two series, the 10 Minute Book Talk with Dr. Brenton Dickieson (i.e., me), on Youtube, and what I want to do as a 5 Books Series here on http://www.aPilgrimInNarnia.com. I have had this video done for a while but still haven’t worked out any other part of the series. So I am pre-launching the series because I think this is a helpful video, and I get more questions about this topic than anything else.
Here, I talk about 5 biographies of C.S. Lewis, each with a different way of looking at his story. The conversation includes:
#1 A personal biography by student and friend, George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis
#2 A baseline critical biography by Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet
#3 A controversial biography from a skeptical angle, A.N. Wilson, C.S. Lewis: A Biography
#4 A literary biography by American public intellectual Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis
#5 A biography of the spiritual life, Devin Brown, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis
I also make some comments about some other biographies of and books about C.S. Lewis, just because I’m not good at sticking with 5!
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“A Pilgrim in Narnia” is a blog project in reading and talking about the work of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, the Inklings, L.M. Montgomery, and the worlds they created. As a "Faith, Fantasy, and Fiction" blog, we cover topics like children’s literature, myths and mythology, fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction, poetry, theology, cultural criticism, art and writing.
This blog includes my thoughts as I read through my favourite writings and reflect on my own life and culture. In this sense, I am a Pilgrim in Narnia--or Middle Earth, or Fairyland, or Avonlea. I am often peeking inside of wardrobes, looking for magic bricks in urban alleys, or rooting through yard sale boxes for old rings. If something here captures your imagination, leave a comment, “like” a post, share with your friends, or sign up to receive Narnian Pilgrim posts in your email box.
Brenton Dickieson (PhD, Chester) is a father, husband, friend, university lecturer, and freelance writer from Prince Edward Island, Canada. You can follow him:
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McGrath sort of intimidates me, reading 20+ books per week and writing a book every year or two. Increadible. I wish this book was more exciting, but perhaps I’m not reading it in my mind with a good enough voice. It is a tight writing script.
If it’s any consolation, before reading this reply, I just wrote my other reply about the number of books you’ve already read this year 😊
Authorial voice is so important. When I read Ronald Hutton’s books I can hear them in his voice (when he gives a talk, it’s in the same style as the books, which helps). He also writes very well indeed.
Yes, Yvonne, I generally liked that novel too. There is much historical in it, but I could never quite see Joy’s personality itself there. Many people think I am wrong about this!
I must get around to reading Surprised by Joy and some of her poetry.
I was looking at your Goodreads book count and noted that so far this year you’ve already read the same number of books that I read last year. (I used to read a lot more books when commuting by bus!)
Many thanks for this, Brenton. I enjoyed listening to it and I think that I would like to read the Devin Brown. I have read the A.N Wilson. For years I have been used to hearing him discoursing cynically, in his highly cultured and carefully crafted accent, on all kinds of issues and it was only in coming across a recent film about T.S Eliot that I realised with some shock that he had returned to his early Christian faith.
Yes, Wilson’s (re)turn is interesting. He has actually rewritten some ideas about Lewis in this updated form–not rethinking Lewis’ facts of biography, but his relation to them. I commented on them here (https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2019/02/18/narnias-lost-poet/), a 2nd part in a series, but I admit I did it in a very rushed way.
Tangential question – I’m still consulting the first edition of Paul Ford’s Companion to Narnia for the (likely) composition history of the chronicles, though (unless I missed it) he doesn’t document how he arrived at it – what do ‘we’ (as opposed to I!) know of the current state of this matter? (E.g., I keep reading refs to McGrath’s redating of Lewis’s conversion(s) – does he redate lots of other things I should know about, including Narnia? I’ve yet to read the latest three of these five biographies…)
It is important because it is early and written with Walter Hooper. I just don’t find it compelling enough to recommend to others, in terms of the storytelling.
What ho! Are we talking about the Green-Hooper biography, or about Roger Lancelyn Green’s C.S. Lewis: A Bodley Head Monograph (1963) thereafter published in the US as C.S. Lewis : A Walck Monograph (NY: Henry Z. Walck, 1963), and reprinted in as one of the “Three Bodley Head Monographs” collections, Henry Treece, C. S. Lewis, Beatrix Potter (Bodley Head, 1969) with the other two being by Margery Fisher and Marcus Crouch?
I see there is a scan of the Walck edition in the Internet Archive among “Texts to Borrow”.
The index of the 1976 “First Harvest edition” paperback reprint of Green and Hooper is always one of my starting points in looking up things about Lewis – though I still have not caught up MCGrath, Jacobs, or Brown…
I liked Alister McGrath’s biography. I like McGrath’s writing style (even though I often dislike his ideas, he writes elegantly).
McGrath sort of intimidates me, reading 20+ books per week and writing a book every year or two. Increadible. I wish this book was more exciting, but perhaps I’m not reading it in my mind with a good enough voice. It is a tight writing script.
If it’s any consolation, before reading this reply, I just wrote my other reply about the number of books you’ve already read this year 😊
Authorial voice is so important. When I read Ronald Hutton’s books I can hear them in his voice (when he gives a talk, it’s in the same style as the books, which helps). He also writes very well indeed.
This was so helpful and well done. Thank you!
Thanks so much!
Not a biography, but I really enjoyed “Becoming Mrs Lewis” (recent novel about Joy Davidman).
Yes, Yvonne, I generally liked that novel too. There is much historical in it, but I could never quite see Joy’s personality itself there. Many people think I am wrong about this!
I must get around to reading Surprised by Joy and some of her poetry.
I was looking at your Goodreads book count and noted that so far this year you’ve already read the same number of books that I read last year. (I used to read a lot more books when commuting by bus!)
Many thanks for this, Brenton. I enjoyed listening to it and I think that I would like to read the Devin Brown. I have read the A.N Wilson. For years I have been used to hearing him discoursing cynically, in his highly cultured and carefully crafted accent, on all kinds of issues and it was only in coming across a recent film about T.S Eliot that I realised with some shock that he had returned to his early Christian faith.
Yes, Wilson’s (re)turn is interesting. He has actually rewritten some ideas about Lewis in this updated form–not rethinking Lewis’ facts of biography, but his relation to them. I commented on them here (https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2019/02/18/narnias-lost-poet/), a 2nd part in a series, but I admit I did it in a very rushed way.
Tangential question – I’m still consulting the first edition of Paul Ford’s Companion to Narnia for the (likely) composition history of the chronicles, though (unless I missed it) he doesn’t document how he arrived at it – what do ‘we’ (as opposed to I!) know of the current state of this matter? (E.g., I keep reading refs to McGrath’s redating of Lewis’s conversion(s) – does he redate lots of other things I should know about, including Narnia? I’ve yet to read the latest three of these five biographies…)
What about Roger Lancelyn Green’s?
It is important because it is early and written with Walter Hooper. I just don’t find it compelling enough to recommend to others, in terms of the storytelling.
What ho! Are we talking about the Green-Hooper biography, or about Roger Lancelyn Green’s C.S. Lewis: A Bodley Head Monograph (1963) thereafter published in the US as C.S. Lewis : A Walck Monograph (NY: Henry Z. Walck, 1963), and reprinted in as one of the “Three Bodley Head Monographs” collections, Henry Treece, C. S. Lewis, Beatrix Potter (Bodley Head, 1969) with the other two being by Margery Fisher and Marcus Crouch?
I see there is a scan of the Walck edition in the Internet Archive among “Texts to Borrow”.
The index of the 1976 “First Harvest edition” paperback reprint of Green and Hooper is always one of my starting points in looking up things about Lewis – though I still have not caught up MCGrath, Jacobs, or Brown…
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