A Severe Mercy

Posted by Joel Heck on Wednesday, October 10, 2012
I just finished rereading Sheldon Vanauken's masterpiece, A Severe Mercy, for the fourth time and adding notes from that reading. Surprisingly, I was able to add more than a thousand words to this chronology, especially by calculating the approximate dates when Vanauken wrote to Lewis. I also added the main subjects of the letters they wrote to each other, which, I think, needs eventually to be done for all letters in this document. It enables the chronology to make more sense, sound more human, and gives context to some of the activities recorded here. But that's a long-term project. And there were some other things I noticed in Vanauken that added good content. Sadly, I also learned that Vanauken burned all of his diaries, including his detailed Oxford diaries that mention meetings with Lewis, shortly after he completed writing the book.

I have also concluded that this document is too long. Consequently, in addition to retaining this 403-page manuscript, I will be dividing the document into four roughly equal-length segments for ease in searching for data in certain years.

Next post: St. Hilda's and...
Previous post: Intellectual History

Tags: "a severe mercy" sheldon vanauken "shining barrier" oxford cambridge 
« Back to posts

blog comments powered by Disqus
 

This is the latest Lewis chronology in Word format:

Chronologically Lewis February 1 2023.docx Chronologically Lewis February 1 2023.docx
Size : 6502.192 Kb
Type : docx
All Spotlights.pdf All Spotlights.pdf
Size : 59.188 Kb
Type : pdf
TheCompleteWorksofCSLewis.pdf TheCompleteWorksofCSLewis.pdf
Size : 313.351 Kb
Type : pdf

The file that appears below lists all works of C. S. Lewis in chronological order (now 528 in number) in the location where they were first published or delivered (if spoken) as far as I am able to determine. Corrections are welcome. This version, slightly revised and added on May 13, 2020, includes a corrected date for "Transposition" on June 9, 1946.

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. 

Intellectual History of Oxford and Cambridge.pdf Intellectual History of Oxford and Cambridge.pdf
Size : 1550.013 Kb
Type : pdf

Tags

Categories