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.