Other essay collections

Lewis wrote over one hundred and twenty essays. Here is a guide to the main collections to help you find your way around.

Rehabilitations (1939) rehabilitates authors and ideas that have fallen out of fashion, including William Morris and the study of classics. The World's Last Night (1960) contains the title essay on the return of Christ, Screwtape Proposes a Toast and Good Work and Good Works; the last two, along with On Obstinacy in Belief, can be read in French in Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre (1985, EBV, Basel). They Asked for a Paper (1962) gathers lectures including De Descriptione Temporum, his inaugural lecture at Cambridge where he presents himself as a “dinosaur,” a witness to a vanished world. Christian Reflections (1967) and Present Concerns (1986) collect newspaper articles on ethics, religion, and society. Selected Literary Essays (1969) gathers his criticism.

• Original title — Rehabilitations (1939); Transposition (1949); The World's Last Night (1960); They Asked for a Paper (1962); Christian Reflections (1967); Selected Literary Essays (1969); Present Concerns (1986)…
• First publication — 1939-1986
• Genre — Essays
• First English edition — Various publishers, most posthumous (ed. Walter Hooper)
• Availability in bookstores — For the most part, not translated; only about twenty essays exist in French according to A.-F. Caballero. No French translation of the collection The World's Last Night is listed in the catalogues of the BnF, the SUDOC, and swisscovery; three of its essays can be read in French in Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre (EBV, Basel, 1985).
• Reading level — Variable
• For whom — For advanced readers, in English.
• Year — 1939

[{title, publisher, year, translator?, note?, source?}]

• Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre — EBV (Brunnen Éditions) — Basel — 1985 — Étienne Huser — contains three of the seven essays from The World's Last Night: “Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre,” “Faith and Obstinacy,” and “Good Work and Good Works”

themes

• Chronological snobbery.
• Doomsday.
• The “post-Christian” West.
• Defending old books.

Family

Essays

Other names

• Essays

Quick facts

How to approach them

Level: Variable. For advanced readers, in English.

A brief overview

Rehabilitations (1939) rehabilitates authors and ideas that have fallen out of fashion, including William Morris and the study of classics. The World's Last Night (1960) contains the title essay on the return of Christ, Screwtape Proposes a Toast and Good Work and Good Works; the last two, along with On Obstinacy in Belief, can be read in French in Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre (1985). They Asked for a Paper (1962) gathers lectures including De Descriptione Temporum, his inaugural lecture at Cambridge where he presents himself as a “dinosaur,” a witness to a vanished world. Christian Reflections (1967) and Present Concerns (1986) collect newspaper articles on ethics, religion, and society. Selected Literary Essays (1969) gathers his criticism.

In Lewis’s workshop

Lewis often wrote for the press, for scholarly journals, or in response to invitations.

What announces Narnia

De Descriptione Temporum sheds light on the nostalgia for the “old Narnia” in the face of modern Telmarins.

What a modern reader will retain

For a French-speaking reader, these collections are an almost unexplored continent: most of the texts exist only in English. They show Lewis as a polemicist and chronicler, commenting on the press, school, justice, or the religion of his time, and leaving several questions open (what is the value of the old versus the new? what should we pass on?).

His legacy

These texts are a mine from which quotations and anthologies are drawn, sometimes at the cost of apocryphal citations.

Key ideas to remember

• Chronological snobbery.
• Doomsday.
• The “post-Christian” West.
• Defending old books.

Reading in French

• Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre, EBV (Brunnen Éditions), Basel, 1985, trans. Étienne Huser — contains three of the seven essays from The World's Last Night: “Démo(n)cratiquement vôtre,” “Faith and Obstinacy,” and “Good Work and Good Works”

See also

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• God at the Dock
• The Weight of Glory
• Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (title not translated)
• Quotes by C.S. Lewis

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis
• https://www.pintswithjack.com/csl-in-france/