The Lewis Papers, 1895-1916
Posted by Joel Heck on Friday, July 10, 2015
This edition of the chronology has finally met one of my major goals, i.e. a half-million words. The one remaining goal, besides continued expansion and historical accuracy, is one thousand pages. The previous document was 849 pages, and this one is now 905 pages. The previous document had more than 487,000 words, and this one has more than 514,000 words, which is a huge jump of about 5.5% (I will explain that jump below). That last goal of a thousand pages is within reach in the next year. But far be it from me to assume that size or length equals quality. I continue to strive for making this the number one choice of Lewis scholars and fans for accurate historical information about the lives of the Lewis brothers.
In addition to meeting these goals, I have added a major feature that, though imperfect at this point, will make the tool more useful. Each year begins with a summary of the most important events of that year for the Lewis brothers, i.e. publications, awards, meetings, events, etc. that were important for one or both of them (send me any improvements you recommend). I did this in rather cursory fashion, but I got most of the events and all of the important bolded sections. But that is not the major reason for the increase in size. In addition to completing my read through the diary of Arthur Greeves, I have started reading through The Lewis Papers, beginning with Warren's birth in 1895. That has taken me to the middle of Volume 5 (there are eleven volumes total), i.e. late 1916. Much more information about the early years is now available, even though most of it appears to be inconsequential. A third source of data for this chronology comes from about 55 unpublished letters of Lewis, which are footnoted thus: "The Wade Center file of unpublished Lewis letters." Readers who know of other unpublished letters by C. S. Lewis should tell me about them so that I can incorporate their dates and contents. S.D.G.
In addition to meeting these goals, I have added a major feature that, though imperfect at this point, will make the tool more useful. Each year begins with a summary of the most important events of that year for the Lewis brothers, i.e. publications, awards, meetings, events, etc. that were important for one or both of them (send me any improvements you recommend). I did this in rather cursory fashion, but I got most of the events and all of the important bolded sections. But that is not the major reason for the increase in size. In addition to completing my read through the diary of Arthur Greeves, I have started reading through The Lewis Papers, beginning with Warren's birth in 1895. That has taken me to the middle of Volume 5 (there are eleven volumes total), i.e. late 1916. Much more information about the early years is now available, even though most of it appears to be inconsequential. A third source of data for this chronology comes from about 55 unpublished letters of Lewis, which are footnoted thus: "The Wade Center file of unpublished Lewis letters." Readers who know of other unpublished letters by C. S. Lewis should tell me about them so that I can incorporate their dates and contents. S.D.G.
Tags: "the lewis papers" "unpublished letters" summary
blog comments powered by Disqus
