by Tenethia South
The 30th anniversary of the publication of VII, a journal publishing the writings of the seven Wade Center Authors, is being marked by the publication of Volume 30. This volume will include the first ever printed edition of Early Prose Joy, a draft essay by CS Lewis on how he came to be a Theist. It has been transcribed by Andrew Lazo and includes an introduction by him. See the 30th Anniversary Issue for further information on the publication, as well as to see a list of other articles that will be included in this edition.
Wow neat! 😀
I’ve never heard of this one. Lewis’ drafts, unlike Tolkien’s, are scarce. The story goes that after he died, his brother set fire to most of his papers.
I thought it was Fred Paxford, or at least I’m sure that’s the version Walter Hooper tells. It was probably Fred and Warnie combined, neither knowing what to do with the work (Warnie probably wasn’t in the best state to make such decisions anyway). Walter tells that he was given one day to take everything he wanted and the next day, whatever was left was going on the bonfire. I think much of it is in the Wade Center. It was amongst those papers that they recently discovered some of Joy’s poems. In a way I can kind of empathise with Fred and/or Warnie wanting to burn it. As a scholar myself I know all the piles of rough drafts and lecture notes you accumulate over the years and much of his papers would have been unimportant notes or drafts and duplicates. A non-scholar would have little interest in having to sort through that mess. Of course among them were probably also gems that will now never see the light of day.