Juvenilia

Charlotte Brontë: The Young Men’s Magazine (1830)

I remember when I used to buy those fat old volumes of the works of some poet or other, they would almost invariably include a section at the front entitled 'Juvenilia.'

Kindlier editors would relegate this to the appendices, so that it didn't constitute one's first introduction to - say - Wordsworth or Tennyson, but those obedient to the remorseless dictates of chronology would place those sorry scraps of verse right there, front and centre, the first thing the eye was likely to light upon.

There's a passage in W. H. Auden's long narrative poem 'Letter to Lord Byron' where he imagines his own fate in the next world:

You know the terror that for poets lurks
Beyond the ferry when to Minos brought.
Poets must utter their Collected Works,
Including Juvenilia. So I thought
That you might warn him. Yes, I think you ought,
In case, when my turn comes, he shall cry ‘Atta boys,
Off with his bags, he’s crazy as a hatter, boys!’

Now was the fear an entirely idle one in his case. The remorseless hand of Katherine Bucknell, editor of this and many other volumes of literary remains by the poet and his great friend Christopher Isherwood, has not allowed even this sacred turf to remain untrodden:

W. H. Auden: Juvenilia (1994)

Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928. Ed. Katherine Bucknell. London: Faber, 1994.

Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928. Expanded Paperback Edition. Ed. Katherine Bucknell. 1994. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003.

It's true that some of Auden's early verse is very good - excellent imitations of Thomas Hardy and Edward Thomas, for the most part - but none of it quite reaches the level of the poems included in his first, 1928, chapbook, let alone the Faber-published Poems (1930).

C. S. & W. H. Lewis: Boxen (2008)

Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C. S. Lewis. Ed. Walter Hooper. London: Collins & Fount Paperbacks, 1985.

Boxen: Childhood Chronicles Before Narnia. Essay by Walter Hooper. 1985. Introduced by Douglas Gresham. 2008. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.

You have to be pretty high up the index of salability (as well as critical reputation) to merit publication of your juvenilia, it should be said. Another recent instance is C. S. Lewis, whose childish 'beast fable' world of Boxen first saw print in 1985, and then again - in a greatly expanded edition - in 2008.

Those who were hoping for something prophetic of the Narnia books were in for a bit of a disappointment, but so great is the interest in him that both books appear to have sold quite well to Lewis 'completists' (such as myself).

Jane Austen: Juvenilia

The Works of Jane Austen. Vol. 6: Minor Works. Now First Collected and Edited from the Manuscripts. With Illustrations from Contemporary Sources. Ed. R. W. Chapman. The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen. 6 vols. 1954. 2nd ed. 1958. 3rd ed. Rev. B. C. Southam. 1969. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.

A rather better known example is (of course) Jane Austen, whose juvenilia first appeared in print in the early twentieth century, and was added by R. W. Chapman as an extra to his classic five-volume edition of her novels in 1954.

Jane Austen: Minor Works (1958)

I suppose the essence of a really impressive body of juvenilia is that it needs to be created in partnership with a sibling or other collaborator. That was the case with C. S. Lewis and his older brother Warnie, as well as Jane Austen and her older sister Cassandra, illustrator of the classic "History of England … By a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian."

Frances Beer, ed.: The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë (1986)

Beer, Frances, ed. The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.

Of course there's no question who are the most famous family of juvenilia writers of all time - and I don't mean Daisy Ashford and her sisters, for all the undoubted charm of The Young Visiters and its successors.

Daisy Ashford: The Young Visiters (1919)

I refer, of course, to the Brontës: Anne, Branwell, Charlotte, and Emily. The story goes that their father Patrick came home one day in 1826 with twelve wooden soldiers, which he meant to be a birthday present for Branwell, who was about to turn nine. His older sister Charlotte (10), and the two younger girls Emily (7) and Anne (6) each chose a particular soldier as their own, and began to elaborate a complex game around these "Young Men" (as they called them):

However, it was not until December 1827 that their ideas took written form, and the imaginary African kingdom of Glass Town came into existence, followed by the Empire of Angria. Emily and Anne created Gondal, an island continent in the North Pacific, ruled by a woman, after the departure of Charlotte in 1831. In the beginning, these stories were written in little books, the size of a matchbox (about 1.5 x 2.5 inches—3.8 x 6.4 cm), and cursorily bound with thread. The pages were filled with close, minute writing, often in capital letters without punctuation and embellished with illustrations, detailed maps, schemes, landscapes, and plans of buildings, created by the children according to their specialisations. The idea was that the books were of a size for the soldiers to read. The complexity of the stories matured as the children's imaginations developed, fed by reading the three weekly or monthly magazines to which their father had subscribed.

- Wikipedia

Fannie Ratchford: The Brontës’ Web of Childhood (1941)

Ratchford, Fannie Elizabeth. The Brontës’ Web of Childhood. 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.

Ratchford, Fannie Elizabeth, ed. Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse by Emily Brontë. Austin: University of Texas Press / London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Limited, 1955.

The classic account of all this is Fannie Ratchford's The Brontës’ Web of Childhood. She followed this up with a rather more controversial rearrangement of Emily Brontë's Gondal poems, which she saw as a connected series of lyric moments which could be linked into a 'verse novel' about a single protagonist, 'A. G. A.' - Queen Augusta Geraldine Almeda.

Pauline Clark: The Twelve and the Genii (1962)

Clarke, Pauline. The Twelve and the Genii. Illustrated by Cecil Leslie. 1962. Faber Paper Covered Editions. London: Faber, 1970.

An even more imaginative response to their imaginary world can be found in Pauline Clarke's 1962 children's book, which concerns the further adventures of the twelve toy soldiers immortalised in the Brontë children's - the 'Genii' of the title - tales of Glass-town, Gondal and Angria.

The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence. 1936-38 (1980)

Wise, Thomas J., & John Alexander Symington, ed. The Shakespeare Head Brontë: The Miscellaneous and Unpublished Writings of Charlotte and Patrick Branwell Brontë. 2 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936.

Actually reading the stories themselves is not so simple as it might appear. For a long time the most complete edition available was that produced by celebrated literary forger and thief Thomas J. Wise, in collaboration with John Alexander Symington, in 1936.

However, given that he:

privately printed abridged and inaccurate editions of ... [the] manuscripts; he removed the original covers from a number of the booklets and had them rebound for his own personal library; and others he took apart page by page, selling the fragments to friends and acquaintances.

- The Cambridge Companion to the Brontës, ed. Heather Glen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 37

that's not really saying very much.

Christine Alexander, ed.: The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë (3 vols, 1987-91)

Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Volume I: The Glass Town Saga, 1826-1832. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987.

Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Volume II: The Rise of Angria, 1833-1835. Part 1: 1833-1834. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Volume II: The Rise of Angria, 1833-1835. Part 2: 1834-1835. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Light began to dawn on this unsatisfactory situation in 1987, when New Zealand-born Academic Christine Alexander started to publish her magisterial, 3-volume edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë.

I recently purchased all three of these books from Browsers Bookshop in Hamilton. Somewhat poignantly, it turned out to be a gift set presented by the editor to her old school, Woodford House. Judging from the library slip at the back, it had only ever been borrowed once, so I suppose it made sense to de-accession it. Anyway, their loss is my gain.

Christine Alexander, ed.: The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë (1987-91))
[photographs: Bronwyn Lloyd]

The fact that it proclaimed itself to be a three-volume edition and it was three volumes I bought led me, mistakenly, to think that it was complete. Not so, I'm afraid. Volume II, The Rise of Angria (1991), is divided into two separate parts.

So where's volume III? Nowhere, it would appear. For some reason the edition was interrupted mid-course, and we're still awaiting its completion thirty years later.

24-7 Press Release: Prof. Christine Alexander (2014)

Not that time has exactly stood still in the meantime. There's been one more attempt, by Brontë scholar Juliet Barker, to provide a representative selection of Charlotte Brontë's part of the juvenilia, as well as a strange little stand-alone publication of the late play 'Stancliffe's Hotel.'

Juliet Barker, ed.: Charlotte Brontë: Juvenilia 1829-1835 (1996)

Charlotte Brontë. Juvenilia 1829-1835. Ed. Juliet Barker. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.

Charlotte Brontë. Stancliffe's Hotel. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2003.

Heather Glen, ed.: Charlotte Brontë: Stancliffe's Hotel (2003)

What can one say about all this? I suppose that the principal interest we take in the juvenilia of subsequently celebrated writer is for the echoes they presumbaly contain of their later, more accomplished works.

And yet they can have a strange charm in themselves. The Scottish writer Marjorie Fleming (1803-1811) wrote a diary in the late eighteen months of her brief life which contains such flashes of charm and wit that it's hard to put down even now.

Miss Isa Keith: Marjorie Fleming (1811)

The Complete Marjory Fleming: Her Journals, Letters & Verse. Ed. Frank Sidgwick. 1934. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1935.

I'm not sure that the same can be said of Opal Whiteley's very odd diary, which was all the rage in the roaring twenties, but seems now to have been some kind of an odd hoax.

Opal Whiteley (1897-1992)

The Diary of Opal Whiteley. Introduction by Viscount Grey of Fallodon. Preface by Ellery Sedgwick. 1920. London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920.

E. S. Bradburne. Opal Whiteley: The Unsolved Mystery. Together with Opal Whiteley's Diary: 'The Journal of an Understanding Heart'. London: Putnam & Company Limited, 1962.

•

Anne & Jack Ross: Kwalic Archive (c.1970-1975)

I have to add, as a postscript to this post, some links to the Mosehouse Studio posts Bronwyn Lloyd has devoted to the childhood writings and drawings of my own family - mostly to do with our toy Koala bears, inhabitants of the city of Kwalalumpa, mapped and genealogised with almost Brontë-like zeal by my sister Anne and myself.

• The Kwalic Archive (Part One) [4/11/2008]
• The Kwalic Archive (Part Two) [17/11/2008]
• Old School [3/11/2011]
• Identity Parade [4/8/2013]

Anne Mairi Ross (1961-1991)

The Talented Mr. Carpenter

Humphrey Carpenter with Dame Antonia Fraser (1988)

Alan Bennett's 2009 play The Habit of Art, a curious work devoted almost wholly (it would seem) to denigrating the late great W. H. Auden (cf. the Guardian article on Bennett entitled "why Auden the bore almost turned me off writing") was broadcast as a "live theatre" performance to cinemas all over the world in 2010.

One of those locations was the Bridgeway theatre in Northcote, Auckland. As an Auden fanatic - unaware at the time of Bennett's views on the poet - I duly turned up to watch the strange farrago unfold.

Alan Bennett: The Habit of Art (2009)

Reading between the lines, it seems probable to me that Bennett set out to write a play about Auden's unhappy last days domiciled in Christ Church, Oxford. It must have got away from him somehow - perhaps it seemed too nakedly spiteful, even to him? - so he decided to turn it instead into a play-within-a-play. "The Habit of Art," then, actually consists of a dress rehearsal for another play called "Caliban's Day". As Bennett explained to the author of the article mentioned above:

in order to address the many queries and notes on the text ("do we need this?"; "too much information") from the play's director, Nicholas Hytner, he invented a framing device: the play would be set in a rehearsal room.

"Queries about the text could then be put in the mouths of the actors who (along with the audience) could have their questions answered in the course of the rehearsal."

In other words, any crappy writing in the Auden play could then be explained away by someone in the cast exclaiming: "what crappy writing!" - one of the many reasons (I speak as one who knows) why such metafictional structures tend to appeal so much to authors and so little to their audiences.

The device also allowed Bennett to introduce the character of the author – himself – who complains about real cuts that Hytner suggested to the play.

Alan Bennett: The Habit of Art (2009)
[l-to-r: Richard Griffiths as Auden; Adrian Scarborough as Carpenter; Alex Jennings as Britten]

The tone of the whole was set early on, when one of the other characters makes a remark about the latest book by Auden's old friend and teacher, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien. "More fucking elves," quips Richard Griffiths (standing in for Michael Gambon at this particular performance).

This may very well encapsulate Alan Bennett's views on Tolkien's Middle-earth, but it seems most unlikely to represent Auden's, given that the poet praised The Lord of the Rings so fulsomely, in so many places, over the years.

W. H. Auden

Who knows, though? Maybe the worm had turned by the early 70s, when the play is set. There was, after all, a famous controversy between the two over Auden's alleged "denigration" of the house Tolkien lived in (he was quoted in the New Yorker in 1966 as having called it as “a hideous house — I can’t tell you how awful it is — with hideous pictures on the wall.”)

Humphrey Carpenter

Another less forgivable dig in Bennett's ill-natured play is what seems a weirdly unmotivated assault on the memory and reputation of Tolkien's first biographer, Humphrey Carpenter. As the wikipedia summary puts it:

Auden has hired a rent boy, Stuart (Tim) and when Humphrey Carpenter (Donald) - who will write biographies of both Auden and Britten after their deaths - arrives to interview him, Auden mistakes him for Stuart.

It isn't quite so simply as that, in context, though. In the actual play as broadcast, the actor playing Carpenter comes on in drag, screeching like a lunatic, and generally embodying some of the "research" the former has been doing on him - as he explains to the director when the latter objects to this rather over-the-top impersonation.

And, yes, apparently Carpenter was a keen amateur musician, who occasionally performed in drag, and generally came across as somewhat larger than life. It's only after that exchange that the play limps on into the long, unfunny and unbelievable scene of Auden's mistaking Carpenter for the teenage rent boy he has "ordered."

To add insult to injury, Bennett tries to undo the rather spiteful impression given by this awful set of caricatures of Auden, Britten and Carpenter by giving his own alter-ego, the author, a long pompous monologue about the "value" he places on each of these lives - the rentboy as much as the poet, the bit-player as much as the star - towards the end of his melodrama.

I guess the reason this rings so false is that the actual nature of these walk-on parts is so stereotyped and perfunctory that one would never know from internal evidence that the writer placed the slightest importance on any of them. If Bennett had made them strong characters in the first place, he wouldn't have needed the face-saving soliloquy.

Why do I dwell so much on this rather forgettable play of Alan Bennett's? I guess because it should remind us all of how fickle is literary fame and reputation. No-one's really in much danger of forgetting the fact of Humphrey Carpenter's remarkable series of trail-blazing biographies, but at the same time their author seems to be receding more and more into oblivion. His wikipedia page doesn't even contain a partial bibliography, though there are a couple of paragraphs describing his books, some not even with their correct titles.

Here's my own attempt at a list (most - though not all of them - from my own collection):

Humphrey Carpenter: J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977)

Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter
(1946–2005)

[titles I own are marked in bold]:

1. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977.
2. The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978.
3. Jesus. Past Masters Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
4. W. H. Auden: A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981.
5. O.U.D.S.: A Centenary History of the Oxford University Dramatic Society 1885–1985. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
6. Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985.
7. Geniuses Together: American Writers in Paris in the 1920s. London: Unwin Hyman Limited, 1987.
8. A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound. London: Faber, 1988.
9. The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends. London: Faber, 1989.
10. Benjamin Britten: A Biography. London: Faber, 1992.
11. The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3, 1946–1996. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996.
12. Robert Runcie: The Reluctant Archbishop. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.
13. Dennis Potter: A Biography. London: Faber, 1998.
14. That Was Satire That Was: The Satire Boom of the 1960s. London: Victor Gollancz, 2000.
15. The Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s. London: Allen Lane, 2002.
16. Spike Milligan: The Biography. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2003.
17. The Seven Lives of John Murray: The Story of a Publishing Dynasty. London: John Murray, 2008.




Humphrey Carpenter: The Angry Young Men (2002)


Edited:


18. [with Mari Prichard]. A Thames Companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
19. [with Christopher Tolkien]. Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981.
20. [with Mari Prichard]. The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
21. Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits. London: Viking, 1994.

Humphrey Carpenter & Mari Prichard, ed.: The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature (1984)

Of course, that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Carpenter. His interest in children's literature manifested itself in a strong desire to make a lasting contribution to the field. After a few ranging shots with such works as The Joshers: Or London to Birmingham with Albert and Victoria (1977) and The Captain Hook Affair (1979), he eventually arrived at Mr Majeika. Long before Harry Potter made the whole idea of wizards as school-teachers a commonplace, the former gave rise to a dizzying variety of titles:

Humphrey Carpenter: Mr Majeika Collection (1984-98)

1. Mr Majeika
2. Mr Majeika and the School Trip
3. Mr Majeika and the Lost Spell Book
4. Mr Majeika and the Ghost Train
5. Mr Majeika and the Dinner Lady
6. Mr Majeika and the School Caretaker
7. Mr Majeika and the Music Teacher
8. Mr Majeika and the Haunted Hotel
9. Mr Majeika and the School Book Week
10. Mr Majeika and the Internet
11. Mr Majeika and the School Inspector
12. Mr Majeika joins the Circus
13. Mr Majeika and the School Play
14. Mr Majeika Vanishes

Mr Majeika was also successfully filmed as a children's TV series (1988-90), which resulted in the spin-off book The Television Adventures of Mr Majeika.

But who exactly was Humphrey Carpenter, and why has his star gone into (at least partial) eclipse? When you add to the works listed above a punishing schedule as a radio presenter and interviewer - not to mention his regular gigs as a jazz musician (the double-bass was his instrument) - the answer must surely include the words "a workaholic."

One of the last of the great English eccentrics, Humphrey Carpenter was brought up in the Warden's Lodgings at Keble College, Oxford, where his father worked until his appointment as Bishop of Oxford. He lived virtually all of his life in Oxford, though his work as a biographer took him all over the world. There's an interesting aside in the acknowledgements at the end of his monumental life of Ezra Pound (p. 973):

my American hosts in the spring of 1985 ... coped with me on my whirlwind research trip when I was at least as mad as Ezra Pound was ever supposed to have been.

What exactly is that supposed to mean? Ample evidence for eccentric behaviour on Pound's part has been given in the 900-odd pages preceding this disclaimer - for Carpenter to describe himself in similar terms is really saying something, therefore.

Perhaps, then, the grotesque caricature who comes flouncing out in Bennett's play is not so far from the reality of Carpenter's ebullient personality as might have been thought from the thorough-to-the-point-of-sober-sidedness nature of (at least) his scholarly books. Who knows? Certainly I don't.

There's room, I would have thought, for a life of Carpenter himself. He must have been a fascinating, many-sided man. Some at least of his biographies can never be superseded, given their priority in setting the terms of the discourse on such authors as Tolkien and Auden. Some of the others (the Pound, the Waugh, for instance) are already receding from view as a result of the ever-increasing outpouring of writing on certain mid-century literary figures.

The sheer range of his interests: not just literary but musical, not just theatrical but theological, too, may have perversely worked to his disadvantage. Only a reader interested in all of these things is likely to notice the solid work done by him in virtually all of the fields he touched.

Carpenter's life of Tolkien was read by all the Lord of the Rings obsessives in my family - which was most of us - the moment it appeared in 1977 (as a double-bill with the first edition of The Silmarillion). We hated it. The lack of empathy he seemed to show with his subject (whom he only actually met once) contrasted greatly with Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper's life of C. S. Lewis, which preceded it by three years.

Over time, though, I came to appreciate the distanced, nuanced nature of Carpenter's approach to biography. he didn't really major on scandal, but he never ignored it, either. His pioneering life of Benjamin Britten, for instance, examines in detail all the sexual innuendos alleged against the composer at various points in his life (and afterwards) with admirable balance and finesse. He isn't so much concerned to make you like his subjects, as to understand them better.

Having a Humphrey Carpenter biography about you guarantees a certain standard of scholarly documentation and research. Far from the grotesque figure of fun of Bennett's play, he shines as a man of protean talents who applied them cannily to create a major and lasting body of work.

Humphrey Carpenter: The Inklings (1978)

Closer examination of his otherwise prodigious rate of production reveals certain recurrent patterns. There is, for instance, his tendency to produce at least two books rather than one from the same approximate area of research. His work on J. R. R. Tolkien (1977) led to a 1978 book on his circle of friends, the Inklings (C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, et al.) - as well as an edition of Tolkien's Letters (1981), co-edited with Christopher Tolkien. His 1981 biography of w. H. Auden must have helped immensely with his later work on Auden's early friend and collaborator Benjamin Britten a decade later, in 1992. His 1988 biography of Ezra Pound is closely shadowed by Geniuses Together (1987), a book on American writers in Paris in the 1920s.

Need I go on? Work on Spike Milligan also informs his work on British satire in the 1960s (not to mention the OUDS). Secret Gardens (1985), his book on classic children's writing, comes hot on the heels of his magisterial Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (1984).

I guess that everyone works like that to some extent: one project motivating and informing the next. In aggregate, though, it does have the effect of making Carpenter seem like a kind of octopus, with a finger in every cultural pie.

Efficient workers work efficiently. It would be different if Carpenter had produced a series of slipshod, perfunctory, ill-researched books. In fact the opposite is the case. There's nothing belletristic in his approach to his craft. If anything, at times one could wish him to be a bit less self-effacing.

Humphrey Carpenter: Quotes

Selling C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get you. By the same token, just because you're a bit unhinged, that doesn't mean you're necessarily wrong about everything.

As a follow-up to my post on the J. R. R. Tolkien Estate, I thought I might address the even more vexed issue of C. S. Lewis's literary legacy, complex and almost beyond disentanglement as it is at this point.

It comes down (for the most part), to a battle of the Titans between two rather dubious people: in the right corner, Walter Hooper, allegedly Lewis's "secretary" in the last few months of his life (though it now turns out that the two were only in contact for a few weeks at most); on the left, the bed-ridden literary sleuth Kathryn Lindskoog, crippled by multiple sclerosis, whose "fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited" (according to Lewis's stepson Douglas Gresham).

Walter Hooper (b.1931)

Kathryn Lindskoog (1934-2003)

What's the easiest way of summarising this controversy? Well, to make it simpler to visualize, I thought I might do what I did for Tolkien: compare the published works from Lewis's lifetime with his posthumous productivity (edited, or introduced - for the most part - by Walter Hooper):

Lifetime
(1898-1963)

Poetry:


1. Lewis, C. S. [as 'Clive Hamilton']. Spirits in Bondage (1919)


2. Lewis, C. S. [as 'Clive Hamilton']. Dymer (1926)


Fiction:


3. Lewis, C. S. The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism (1933)


4. Lewis, C. S. Out of the Silent Planet (1938)


5. Lewis, C. S. Perelandra: A Novel (1943)


6. Lewis, C. S. That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (1945)


7. Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce: a Dream (1945)


8. Lewis, C. S. Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956)


Children's Books:


9. Lewis, C. S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: A Story for Children (1950)


10. Lewis, C. S. Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia (1951)


11. Lewis, C. S. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: A Story for Children (1952)


12. Lewis, C. S. The Silver Chair: A Story for Children (1953)


13. Lewis, C. S. The Horse and His Boy (1954)


14. Lewis, C. S. The Magician’s Nephew (1955)


15. Lewis, C. S. The Last Battle: A Story for Children (1956)


Theology:


16. Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. The Christian Challenge Series (1940)


17. Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters (1942)


18. Lewis, C. S. Miracles: A Preliminary Study (1947)


19. Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity [consisting of Broadcast Talks (1942), Christian Behaviour (1942) and Beyond Personality (1944).] (1952)


20. Lewis, C. S. Reflections on the Psalms (1958)


21. Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves (1960)


22. Lewis, C. S. The World's Last Night and Other Essays (1960)


Criticism:


23. Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of Love: a Study in Medieval Tradition (1936)


24. Lewis, C. S. Rehabilitations and Other Essays (1939)


25. Lewis, C. S., & E. M. W. Tillyard. The Personal Heresy: A Controversy (1939)


26. Lewis, C. S. A Preface to Paradise Lost(1942)


27. Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man: Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (1943)


28. Lewis, C. S. Arthurian Torso (1948)


29. Lewis, C. S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, excluding Drama. Oxford History of English Literature (1954)


30. Lewis, C. S. Studies in Words. (1960)


31. Lewis, C. S. Experiment in Criticism (1961)


32. Lewis, C. S. They Asked for a Paper: Papers and Addresses (1962)


Autobiography & Letters:


33. Lewis, C. S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (1955)


34. Lewis, C. S. [as 'N. W. Clerk']. A Grief Observed (1961)


Edited &c.:


35. Lewis, C. S. ed. George MacDonald: An Anthology (1947)


36. Lewis, C. S. ed. Essays Presented to Charles Williams (1947)

That's a pretty substantial oeuvre: novels, children's books, poetry, critical books, as well as the works of popular theology he's most famous for ("easy answers to difficult questions," as one of his more sardonic friends called them).

So what happened afterwards?

Posthumously
(1963- )

Poetry:


1. Lewis, C. S. Poems. Ed. Walter Hooper (1964)


2. Lewis, C. S. Narrative Poems. Ed. Walter Hooper (1969)


3. Lewis, C. S. Collected Poems. Ed. Walter Hooper (1994)


Fiction:


4. Lewis, C. S. The Dark Tower and Other Stories. Ed. Walter Hooper (1977)


5. Hooper, Walter, ed. Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C. S. Lewis (abridged: 1985)


6. Lewis, C. S., & W. H. Lewis. Boxen: Childhood Chronicles Before Narnia. Essay by Walter Hooper. 1985. Introduced by Douglas Gresham (complete: 2008)


Theology:


7. Lewis, C. S. Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer (1964)


8. Lewis, C. S. Screwtape Proposes a Toast and Other Pieces (1965)


9. Lewis, C. S. Of Other Worlds. Ed. Walter Hooper (1966)


10. Lewis, C. S. Christian Reflections. Ed. Walter Hooper (1967)


11. Lewis, C. S. God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Ed. Walter Hooper (1970)


12. Lewis, C. S. Fern-seed and Elephants and Other Essays on Christianity. Ed. Walter Hooper (1975)


13. Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory. Ed. Walter Hooper (1980)


14. Lewis, C. S. Of This and Other Worlds. Ed. Walter Hooper (1982)


15. Lewis, C. S. The Business of Heaven. Ed. Walter Hooper (1984)


16. Lewis, C. S. First and Second Things. Ed. Walter Hooper (1985)


17. Lewis, C. S. Present Concerns. Ed. Walter Hooper (1986)


18. Lewis, C. S. Timeless at Heart. Ed. Walter Hooper (1987)


19. Lewis, C. S. Christian Reunion. Ed. Walter Hooper (1990)


20. Lewis, C. S. Readings for Meditation and Reflection. Ed. Walter Hooper (1992)


21. Lewis, C. S. Compelling Reason: Essays on Ethics and Theology (1998)


22. Lewis, C. S. Essay Collection: & Other Short Pieces. Ed. Lesley Walmsley (2000)


Criticism:


23. Lewis, C. S. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964)


24. Lewis, C. S. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Ed. Walter Hooper (1966)


25. Lewis, C. S. Spenser’s Images of Life. Ed. Alistair Fowler (1967)


26. Lewis, C. S. Selected Literary Essays. Ed. Walter Hooper (1968)


Translation:


27. C. S. Lewis's Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile. Ed. A. T. Reyes. Foreword by Walter Hooper (2011)


Autobiography & Letters:


28. Lewis, W. H., ed. Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966)


29. Lewis, C. S. Letters to an American Lady. Ed. Clyde S. Kilby (1967)


30. Hooper, Walter, ed. They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963) (1979)


31. Lewis, C. S., & Don Giovanni Calabria. Letters: A Study in Friendship (1988)


32. Lewis, C. S. Letters. Ed. W. H. Lewis. 1966. Rev. ed. ed. Walter Hooper (1988)


33. Lewis, C. S. All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922-1927. Ed. Walter Hooper. Foreword by Owen Barfield (1991)


34. Lewis, C. S. Collected Letters, Volume I: Family Letters, 1905-1931. Ed. Walter Hooper (2000)


35. Lewis, C. S. Collected Letters, Volume II: Books, Broadcasts and the War, 1931-1949. Ed. Walter Hooper (2004)


36. Lewis, C. S. Collected Letters, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy, 1950-1963. Ed. Walter Hooper (2007)

Kathryn Lindskoog:
Sleuthing C. S. Lewis (2001)

Kathryn Lindskoog estimated that, by 2001, when her book Sleuthing C. S. Lewis: More Light in the Shadowlands appeared, Walter Hooper had edited, or written forewords for, no fewer than 27 books of C. S. Lewis material, and written over 300 pages of prefatory material for them. Since the appearance of her book, he's edited another 4,000-odd pages of Lewis's letters in the three-volume set of his Collected Letters.

One would certainly have to call him industrious, considering the fact that during this same period he also collaborated with Roger Lancelyn Green on the 1974 authorised biography of Lewis, wrote a critical book on the Narnia books (Past Watchful Dragons (1979)), and compiled the immense C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide (1996).

So what's wrong with that? Nothing, surely. Lewis's fans have an apparently inexhaustible appetite for anything from the Master's hand. Why should Hooper be criticized for providing precisely that?

Well, I guess that one could begin with the nature of Hooper's editing - the bibliographical chaos of all of those overlapping volumes of theological essays, constantly repackaged in different ways as the decades unfolded. One might also cite the fatuous, gushing tone of his prefaces, comparing Lewis to one "of the Apostles," recounting silly snippets of conversation from the period when he was "his private secretary in the last months of his life" (elsewhere: his "companion-secretary").

All this rings a bit false when one discovers that Hooper and Lewis were in fact personally acquainted for only a few weeks in the last year of the latter's life, and that there's even some dispute about whether he ever did in fact live in his house. He certainly wasn't there for very long if so.

Hooper certainly exaggerates the extent of his "intimacy" with Lewis, and it's a bit hard to understand how he's come to assume such a crucial role in the centre of "Lewis studies" (for want of a better description).

There is, however, one very important event which does go some way towards explaining it: the famous "bonfire" of Lewis's literary remains which (allegedly) took place in January 1964.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of Hooper's activities over the years has been his systematic undermining of the reputation of Major Warren Lewis ("Warnie"), C. S. ("Jack") Lewis's beloved brother and friend.

First of all there was this tale of the bonfire on which "Warnie" allegedly cast all of Lewis's manuscripts and proofs. In chapter three of her exhaustive study, "Throwing Water on the Bonfire Story" (pp.41-55) Lindskoog does an interesting job of comparing the various conflicting accounts of this event, which has gradually come to assume dimensions as terrifying as Lady Burton's holocaust of her husband's literary remains, or the burning of the first book of Carlyle's French Revolution by a careless housemaid.

Did it ever take place? Nothing was said of this three-day orgy of destruction by anyone until 1977, when Hooper told the sad tale in his introduction to The Dark Tower. Also, within two months of the great burning, W. H. Lewis was advertising in the press for unpublished C. S. Lewis letters for his projected biography of his brother. It just doesn't seem that probable that he would have destroyed all those suitcases full of papers described so movingly by Hooper ...

When was it, in any case? The Dark Tower preface dates it to January 1964. But in a letter of W. H. Lewis's to Hooper dated 8 February, written from Ireland, he remarks that "I look forward to meeting you." If he hadn't even met Hooper at this point, how does this square with his allowing the unknown American to save so many pages of manuscript remains from the engulfing flames a few weeks before?

Perhaps the fire actually took place in February. But if so, why did Hooper specify that he had to drag two large trunks of papers back to his rooms in Keble College, where he was living in January, but not February 1964?

Less and less seems to have been heard about this famous bonfire, the source of Hooper's unrivalled (and largely unseen) collection of Lewis typescripts and manuscripts, since the 1980s. The story does not make it into his 940-page C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide (titled in the US: A Complete Guide to His Life and Works). But either it happened or it didn't. If it didn't, why has Hooper told the tale so often and so circumstantially? If it did, why has he stopped doing so?

LIndskoog also points out that Fred Paxford, Lewis's gardener, the man who allegedly performed the fell deed (albeit on Major Lewis's orders) categorically denied it:

"As regards Walter Hooper's story about a bonfire, I am still in touch with Paxford and went to see him yesterday," Len Miller wrote to me. "He says it is all lies." ... he added, "I am afraid anything Hooper says should be taken with a large pinch of salt." [p.47]

The bonfire has been very useful to Hooper (as Lindskoog points out), since it provides a source of manuscript authority for any subsequent changes and additions he has made to the Lewis canon. Whether or not it actually happened - and it is a little hard to believe that it can have, given the conflicting nature of the accounts given of it over the years - it does rather cast a shadow over Hooper's credibility in general.

Then there's the matter of "Warnie's" (again alleged) alcoholism and general unreliability. What people could be forgiven for not realizing, as they read Hooper's bumptious and patronising account of his "old friend's" little failing (in the preface to his 1988 "corrected edition" of Warnie's 1966 collection of his brother's Letters, among other places), is that W. H. Lewis was himself a considerable scholar (of French history and literature, mainly) and wrote a number of works about the era of Louis XIV which are still well worth reading.

The Sunset of the Splendid Century: The Life and Times of Louis Auguste de Bourbon Duc du Maines, 1670-1736 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1955), is particularly entertaining, but Levantine Adventurer: The Travels and Missions of the Chevalier d’Arvieux, 1653-1697 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1962) also has its moments.

Far from the ill-informed, querulous drunk he's gradually been reduced to in the Hooper demonology, W. H. Lewis should be seen as an indispensable part of his brother's life work, and a valid and honorable person in his own right.

For so systematic, cunning and ruthless a campaign of petty subterfuge and damning with faint praise, I think one would have to go back to the egregious Rufus Griswold, the alleged "friend" (but actually bitter enemy) of Edgar Allan Poe, who (as the latter's literary executor) managed to create, almost single-handedly, the black legend of Poe's drunkenness, perverted taste for young girls, and general irresponsibility in worldly affairs.

It took many many years for Poe's reputation to recover from Griswold's calumnies; hopefully the reputation of C. S. Lewis may eventually be able to be seen apart from the misrepresentations of Walter Hooper.

Anthony Hopkins as C. S. Lewis
[Shadowlands (1993)]

You'll notice how often "Warnie" is seen staggering about drunkenly in this rather romanticized account of Lewis's late love affair with Joy Gresham. To do them credit, the film-makers are also careful to show him as the most humane and wise member of Lewis's entourage.

Joss Ackland as C. S. Lewis
[Through the Shadowlands (1985)]

None of this can be allowed to detract from the fact that Lindskoog is herself not beyond reproach. The central contention of her book is that Walter Hooper is not simply an egotist, determined to promote himself to centre-stage in the Lewis story, but also a ruthless and cunning forger, who has systematically contaminated the gene-pool of pure Lewisiana with his own foolish impostures (the fragmentary Dark Tower novel principal among them).

She may well be right, but unfortunately extraordinary accusations need extraordinary levels of proof, and this she fails to provide. She gives any number of excuses for this in her book, but I'm afraid the basic rule of scholarship is that what cannot be proven, should not be asserted.

A brief examination of some of her other theories (such as her notion that the subject of Botticelli's enigmatic painting Primavera is actually Dante's meeting with Beatrice in the final canto of the Purgatorio; or her discovery that "parts of Huckleberry Finn were copied from a book by Scottish author George MacDonald"), do not inspire very much confidence in her judgement or sense of the value of hard evidence.

For what it's worth, I suspect that The Dark Tower is indeed a piece of poor early writing by Lewis, rather than a cunning forgery by Hooper. Without a close examination of the manuscript, though (including, perhaps, a test for scorch-marks) it's hard to be absolutely sure.

What is certain is that the multi-million dollar Lewis estate has, for reasons of its own, allowed Walter Hooper to issue volume after volume of ephemeral material by Lewis, edited without any systematic scholarship or method. That's a pity, given C. S. Lewis's own lifetime of devotion to the niceties of scholarship.

I suppose the best of his work will survive it, though - as will the best of his friend J. R. R. Tolkien's.

[Sandro Botticelli: Primavera [Spring] (c.1482)