The file that appears immediately below this posting lists all of the works of Lewis in chronological order and in the location where it was first published or delivered (if spoken) as far as I am able to determine. Corrections welcome. Added April 14, 2011.
June 15, 2013
There is actually one step prior to doing more of Warren Lewis's diaries--The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. This update is based on additional information that has come from reading the first half of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Occasionally, I was able to remove the word “presumably” from a date that the Inklings met, added some data from meetings between Jack and Tollers, an occasional reference to an Inklings meeting not otherwise noted, footnoted some references more accurately (instead of using William Griffin’s Clive Staples Lewis, which was drawing on Tolkien’s letters), and, though I had previously worked through the index of Tolkien’s letters and its references to Jack, added some additional information because of a closer reading. A lot of the additional information (about a thousand words) has to do with the progress Tolkien made on writing The Lord of the Rings, which I include only because Jack was such an influence on that book and heard the book read chapter by chapter at Inklings meetings.
Posted by Joel Heck.
June 8, 2013
This update completes the proofreading of all of the Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis. The narrative of "Chronologically Lewis" now reads a bit more smoothly, since the contents of all letters are summarized under each date. Some minor corrections were also made in the chronology, and more footnotes appear. Next up: reading more of the unpublished diary of Warren Lewis and incorporating insights on one or both brothers as a result. Continue reading...
Posted by Joel Heck.
June 1, 2013
This update takes us through May 1930 and 900 pages of Collected Letters, Vol. I. Since a *.pdf file is able to be searched, a search for terms such as "Scott" (for Sir Walter Scott) should produce the places where Lewis wrote about him in his letters. There are only 77 more pages to reread and the process of rereading all three volumes of Collected Letters, making corrections, and adding summaries of the contents of all of Lewis's letters will be complete. Continue reading...
Posted by Joel Heck.
May 30, 2013
This post includes the next one hundred pages, proofread and updated, for the Lewis chronology through page 600 of Collected Letters, Volume I. It improves the chronology up through 1922, leaving 1923-1930 yet to do in order to complete all three volumes of Collected Letters. As usual, I have found a letter or two that I missed, added some details, etc. I have noted a chronological problem during July 1921, when Jack took a week with his father and Uncle Augustus and Aunt Anne Hamilton via au... Continue reading...
Posted by Joel Heck.
May 18, 2013
This new file, uploaded just sixteen days after the last one (it's summer for me, so my schedule is lighter) contains a major upgrade. It includes about 5,500 more words, many of them about Lewis' reading list for Responsions during the first three months of 1917, but some of it about the contents of many of his letters and one or two other letters I had somehow previously missed. He arrived in Oxford for scholarship examinations on March 20, 1917, and the previous three months he kept a read... Continue reading...
Posted by Joel Heck.
May 10, 2013
This latest version of the chronology is, of course, longer and with more detail than the previous one, taking us through almost half of 1916 (starting from the beginning of his letters). As I reread Volume 1 of Collected Letters, I see a few things I missed and add them. Mostly I add more detail, but occasionally I get an insight. One fascinating (to me at least) such detail is that I have discovered the actual date that Lewis bought Phantastes, March 4, 1916. Others probably already know th... Continue reading...
Posted by Joel Heck.
April 26, 2013
This chronology is about 3,000 words longer than the previous one. It contains especially information about letters written by Jack during the first years of his life, through 1914, from Collected Letters, Vol. I. As usual, I found a couple of letters and a couple of incidents I had previously missed. Included in this version also are some notes from The Lewis Papers, an unpublished set of papers, letters, diaries, etc. that Warren Lewis put together. Continue reading...
Posted by Joel Heck.
March 29, 2013
This updated chronology includes all of the contents of Jack's letters, briefly summarized, from Volume II of Collected Letters. It covers the years 1931 through 1949. As in the previous versions, I have included a couple of letters previously not included (I somehow missed them the first time through) and a few events previously overlooked. A very few corrections to the chronology were made. This version also includes a date for the publication of The Four Loves, which I got from William O'F... Continue reading...
Posted by Joel Heck.
March 14, 2013
With this new posting, just thirteen days after the previous one, I have completed the summarizing of contents of the letters of Lewis through 1947. During this work, I noticed several letters previously not included (although I don't know why, probably just carelessness on the first read-through of Volume 2), hence the value of proofreading Collected Letters, Volume 2. One letter was to Sister Penelope and another to Dorothy L. Sayers. They don't tell much of what Lewis was doing, but they a... Continue reading...
Posted by Joel Heck.
February 19, 2013
This latest posting completes the additions to this chronology, based on Alister McGrath's recent biography of Lewis (to be released on March 1). It includes McGrath's redating of Lewis's conversion to theism and also to Christianity, but it has many other additional new pieces of information. It also adds additional information about the content of Lewis's letters in the early 1940s, as I continue that project of adding such information to this chronology. My review of McGrath's book will ap... Continue reading...
Posted by Joel Heck.
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This is the latest chronology.
Just in case you want to look through a portion of the chronology and don't want to have to wade through a huge file, here are portions of the chronology by decade (approximately):
This file describes what is happening in Oxford, Cambridge, the UK, and Europe at the time that Lewis writes his various poems, essays, and books, dividing the life and writings of Lewis by academic topic, i.e. English, Philosophy, History, etc. |
