Una O'Connor Clerihew

As a character actress, Una O'Connor

deserved great praise and honor.
No matter who else was on the screen
with a look or her voice she could steal any scene.

Utopian and Dystopian Fiction

The September/October issue of StAR (Saint Austin Review) contains a short article by Manuel Alfonseca on two genres of fiction - "Utopias and Dystopias."

Alfonseca defines "utopias" as "descriptions of fictitious perfect societies," and he notes that the name comes from St. Thomas More's 1516 Utopia - a title that means "nowhere." He lists a number of works as utopian:

Republic - Plato
The City of the Sun (1602) -  Tomasso Campanella 

New Atlantis (1627) - Francis Bacon 

The Coming Race (1871) - Bulwer Lytton

Looking Backward (1888) - Edward Bellamy 

News from Nowhere (1890) - William Morris

Lost Horizon (1933) - James Hilton

Island (1962) - Aldous Huxley  

To be honest, I have only read two of these works - Utopia and Lost Horizon, I have heard of Look Backward, though I haven't read it. I haven't heard of any of the rest. But that's not surprising given that I am of a more dystopian bent.

Alfonseca actually only devotes the first paragraph to utopias; the bulk of the article deals with dystopias.   He defines "dystopias" as describing "imperfect societies that allow their author to criticize the society to which he belongs, or to predict future trends that are undesirable or frankly horrible." He notes that dystopias are more modern than utopias, and linked the proliferation of such works to a number of unsettling events in the 20th Century, specifically the global discontentment following the First World War, the communist revolution in Russia, and the Second World War. 

He lists a number of dystopias he has read, sharing observations about them:

Erewhon (1872) - Samuel Butler

Lord of the World (1907) - Robert Hugh benson

We (1921) - Yevgueni Zamyatin

Brave New World (1932) - Aldous Huxley

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) - George Orwell

One (or Escape to Nowhere) (1953 - David Karp

Fahrenheit 451 (1953) 0 Ray Bradbury

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) - Walter M. miller Jr.

A Clockwork Orange (1962) - Anthony Burgess

Do androids dream of electric sheep? (1968) Philip K. Dick 

I am Margaret (2014) - Corinna Turner

I have read most of these dystopian works - though, I admit, I am Margaret is new to me. Indeed, in the lead up to the dystopian 2020 election I read or reread a number of them -  Lord of the World, Brave New World, Nineteen Eight-Four, Fahrenheit 451, and A Canticle for Leibowitz. 

They prepared me for what was to come!

I also agree with Alfonseca that the movie Blade Runner, based on Do androids dream of electric sheep?, is far better than the novel. 

There are many other dystopias that did not make his list in the article, which, as he noted, consisted of works that he had actually read. (The article is based on a chapter from a book he wrote, so many others may have been mentioned in the book.) The Hunger Games books by Collins, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton, and That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis come to mind. And I'm glad he left The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood off the list as it has been so twisted for political/social purposes these days.

Alfonseca observes that some people are speculating that we are getting closer to the worlds created by Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four - I would be among them. But he offers a more optimistic spin - one of which I'm sure Chesterton would approve.

"But I prefer to remember what Jesus Christ said about this: The gates of hell shall not prevail against my Church (Mt 16:18). Neither utopias nor dystopias will prevail, because man is free and can fall in sin and be redeemed."

Side note: If you have not discovered StAR yet, do check it out. It offers great, in-depth discussions of literature, art, the culture, etc., all from a classical and very Catholic perspective.

Rereading

"We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it's like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness." - C. S. Lewis 

The most recent issue of Gilbert (September/October 2022) contains an essay by Mark Johnson, "Old Friends Pay a Return Visit."

In the essay, Johnson notes his habit of reading classic novels every night. He has a fondness for 19th Century novels - a fondness I share.

But he ran into a problem. 

After years of reading, he had read them all, even down to the "fourth tier." With nothing new to read, he was faced with the terrible prospect of "mid-life acedia.".

Then one night he dipped into Middlemarch, a book he'd already read, to look a few of his favorite pages, and found himself caught up in the book again and completely reread it, enjoying it just as much - if not more - than the first time he read it. 

Eureka!

So now he is rereading some of his "old friends."

In rereading, he discovered he is better able to keep the characters or plot twists straight, and found he is able to relax more with the books. In the process, he also realized that, "Some aspects of a novel are literally impossible to recognize until a second read." He is able to make connections; he has a greater level of maturity and understanding as well. "I'm now aware that the art inside great literature unfolds and blooms most vividly upon a second or subsequent read."

This essay resonated with me. I am also in the process of rereading. I just include more than the 19th Century novels that I like.

Rereading is not a new thing for me. As a teacher, I had to reread some of the books I was teaching to keep them fresh. I don't know how many times I've reread To Kill a Mockingbird, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and various of Shakespeare's plays. While I enjoyed the rereads, the purpose was professional.

Now I am rereading for pleasure books that I read 30-40-50 years ago. When I first read them, it was often because I had to read them for a class I was taking or teaching, or because I felt I was "supposed" to read them.  Like Johnson, I find myself now not only enjoying them, but also that I am better able to appreciate their artistry and insights into human nature and the spiritual.

I don't, however, limit myself to 19th Century novels, though they are certainly in the mix. In recent months, I've reread St. Augustine's Confessions, Brideshead Revisited, Chesterton's "biography" of St. Thomas Aquinas, The Screwtape Letters, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, to name a few. I'm currently rereading The Imitation of Christ, and The Brothers Karamazov. 

Unlike Johnson, there are books I haven't read before - as an English and History teacher, I was often reading books for class, and did not have time for as much pleasure reading as I desired, and before that when I was a reporter, I was constantly reading the books and essays and background information of the people whom I would interview or the topics I was covering. So now I mix in the books I always wanted to read. The Idiot, for example, or Oliver Twist. 

Now that I'm retired, many more first reads and rereads await.

Johnson's essay revealed to me a kindred spirit. And as I reread, I, like him, will "make sure I don't waste great wine."

How J.R.R. Tolkien Came to Write the Stories of 'The Rings of Power'

How J.R.R. Tolkien Came to Write the Stories of 'The Rings of Power': Haunted by the approach of another world war, the beloved fantasy author created a new story of Middle-earth that few people even knew about—until now

Hilaire Belloc Clerihew

 

Hilaire Belloc

walked off the end of a dock,

but being in the middle of a debate,

he failed to recognize his fate.

Alfred Hitchcock Clerihew

 

Alfred Hitchcock

developed a bad case of writer's block

despite his use of a bran muffin

as the MacGuffin.

The Ignatius "Lepanto"

 

In addition to the wonderful talks and getting to interact with fellow Chestertonians at the Rochester Chesterton Conference, one of the joys is perusing the books/magazines/etc. for sale. Dale Ahlquist and Joseph Pearce are almost always there hawking their books and materials.

Last year, Dale brought along the Ignatius edition of  "Lepanto" that he had edited, and that included explanatory notes and commentary..

Even though I had read the poem before, I bought the book. I finally got around to reading it this week. 

I can't say enough about the book. It brought the poem to life.

The wonderful notes explained references and context, and linked the poem to passages from Chesterton's other works. Brandon Rogers nicely explained the background for the poem, Colonel Melvin Kriesel offered a military analysis of the battle, William Cinfici describe the aftermath, and Dale provided some analysis of the poem. 

The edition also includes two of Chesterton's essays - "The True Romance" and "If Don John of Austria Had Married Mary Queen of Scots." Again, I had read these previously, but it was nice to link them with the poem.

I can't wait for this year's conference to see what delightful books they will be hawking this time around.

Crisis Magazine: Book It

 

Crisis Magazine - "A Voice for the Faithful Catholic Laity" - has been featuring a series of articles about some of our favorite authors.

The recent articles include:

The Man Who Was Thursday in a Nutshell

The Ball and the Cross in a Nutshell

The Four Men in a Nutshell

Out of the Silent Planet: A Guidebook Against the “New Normal”

Perelandra: Dreadful Good and Reasonable Evil 

The first three were written by Joseph Pearce. The latter two were written by Mary Cuff.

The magazine - to which one can subscribe online for free - has had any number of wonderful articles. Just consider some of these titles:

Was Shakespeare Catholic? (Pearce again!) (He also has a series of "Nutshell" articles about a variety of books) 

Real Marriages Are Founded on God, Not Government

Inviting Us to Participate in Sin - (on the synodal process!)

Weapon of Choice - (The Rosary)

She-Hulk Shows Why Feminism Is Not the Answer

I suspect if Chesterton were around today he would be a frequent contributor. 

The magazine is well worth checking out. 

 

The Patron Saint of Television!

 

There's a legend that St. Clare 

appeared at the '36 World Fair.

Some folks at the television display claimed they did see

on the screen the face of the fair saint from Assisi.

Chesterton on EWTN

 

EWTN rebroadcasts this wonderful show Monday mornings at 6:30. What a pleasant way to begin the week. 

Though it is odd seeing Dale without a beard!

The 100th anniversary of Chesterton’s conversion—and its ripple effect

 

Dale's article printed in Catholic World Report - 

Because GKC became Catholic, I became Catholic. And so have countless others.

When G.K. Chesterton was received into the Catholic Church one hundred years ago, on Sunday, July 30, 1922, it was big news. Except it wasn’t. It didn’t quite qualify as “news” because nobody knew about it. The two priests who received him into the Church – Fr. John O’Connor, his long-time friend who was also the inspiration for Chesterton’s immortal fictional detective Father Brown, and Dom Ignatius Rice, a Benedictine monk from Douai Abbey – vowed to say nothing about the ceremony. Not for any religious reasons. They just wanted to see how long it would take the press to find out.

It took three weeks.

And it was big news when it was finally reported. Except it wasn’t. At least for part of the reading public. Many of them thought Chesterton was already Catholic. After all, he’d been defending the Catholic Church for years, and taking the Catholic position at every turn, on every topic, and in every controversy. And he’d already written two dozen popular stories featuring the aforementioned Father Brown.

But there was also many Chesterton admirers and devotees who were genuinely surprised because they refused to believe he would ever do something so inconceivable as actually joining the Catholic Church. This group included both Catholics and non-Catholics, from his best friend and faith Papist Hilaire Belloc to his good friend and philosophical opponent George Bernard Shaw who had long made fun of what he called Chesterton’s “Roman Catholic hobby.” When Shaw heard the news, he fired off a letter to his debating partner saying, “Gilbert! This is going too far!” And Belloc, in genuine and pensive awe, wrote: “I never thought it was possible.”

The reaction within the Church of England, to which he belonged, also ran the gamut. When the local vicar in Beaconsfield heard the news, he said, “I’m glad Chesterton is going over to Rome. He was never a very good Anglican.”

On the other hand, an editorial in the Anglican weekly, The Church Times, said what was strange about Chesterton was not that he had become Catholic, but that he had remained so long in the Anglican communion. The growing liberalism within the Church of England was driving away the educated laity, and had never “attracted one educated man to the church” but rather “robbed that church of the genius of G.K. Chesterton.”

In contrast, the Catholic papers were ecstatic. THE TABLET’s headline crowed: “THE HOMECOMING OF MR. CHESTERTON.” It likened the conversion to that of John Henry Newman, and expressed happiness over having Chesterton’s happiness in the Church. “He will not let the devil have all the frolic.” But it also expressed what many felt: that Chesterton would not change.They wanted the same Chesterton they had already come to know; not a new one, just a Catholic one.

Chesterton called his conversion “the chief event” of his life. And we can say that in his writing and in his public persona, he didn’t change. In fact, there is not a discernible difference in his post-conversion writings from his pre-conversion writings. Except there is. He does in fact take on specific Protestant doctrines and is more specific in his rebuttals of them. He had always challenged Calvinism, but he zeroed in more on Luther. He had always demonstrated a mastery of Scripture but took apart the “Bible-worshippers” whom he found as small minded as the “Bible-bashers.”

He said there were ten thousand reasons, but they all amounted to the same reason. It was because “The Catholic Church is true.”

But when asked, these were some of the other reasons he gave.

The most striking answer: “To get rid of my sins.” Only the Catholic Church can do that.

Another answer was the sober realization that the Anglican Church wasn’t Catholic. “I always believed in the Catholic view of Christianity, at least I have believed it for twenty years. Unless the Church of England was a branch of the Catholic Church, I had no use for it. If it were a Protestant Church, I did not believe in it. In any case the question is whether the Church of England can claim to be in direct descent from the medieval Catholic Church …

“It appears to me quite clear that any church claiming to be an authoritative church must be quite definite when great questions of public morals are put. Can I go in for cannibalism or the murder of babies to reduce the population, or any other scientific and progressive reform? Any church with authority to teach must say whether it can be done. But the Protestant churches are in utter bewilderment on these moral questions.”

One of the moral questions was contraception. When Anglican bishops became champions of what Chesterton called “a low and poisonous trick, not far removed from infanticide,” he realized they were taking a position that was essentially heathenism. They were speaking with no unity, no authority, and could not denounce open immorality. He wanted to be part of the Church Militant. As he explained to his mother, he was joining “the one fighting form of Christianity.”


He was accused – and dismissed – as having a romantic attachment to a love of ritual and the aesthetics of the high Middle Ages with its Gothic Cathedrals reaching towards heaven.

But in a letter to a man named Bertram Hyde, who had raised these very concerns and asked him truly why he became Catholic, Chesterton responded: “I ought to say first that, saving the grace of God, my own conversion to Catholicism was entirely rational; and certainly not at all ritualistic. I was received in a tin shed at the back of a railway hotel. I accepted it because it did afford conviction to my analytical mind. But people can see the ritual and are seldom allowed to hear of the philosophy. About ritual itself I think the truest thing was said by Yeats the poet, certainly not a Catholic or even a Christian; that ceremony goes with innocence. Children are not ashamed of dressing-up, nor great poets at great periods, as when Petrarch wore the laurel. Our world does feel something of what Wells says, because our world is as nervous and irritable as Wells himself. But I think the children and the poets are more permanent.”

Three years later Bertram Hyde was received into the Catholic Church.

Which brings us to the ripple effect of Chesterton’s conversion. G.K. Chesterton might be one of the greatest makers of Catholic converts of the last century, and the ripples continue to be felt.

Here is just one ripple. Because GKC became Catholic, I became Catholic. Here’s another ripple.

Because I read Chesterton and became Catholic, I did a television show about Chesterton on EWTN. And because lots of people watched that show, it helped lead to a revival of interest in Chesterton. And also, many people who watched that show became Catholic, or became more Catholic.

But here’s another ripple. Because I became Catholic, my wife became Catholic, too, that is, she returned to the Catholic Church in which she had been baptized and confirmed, but it was a faith she had never really lived, until we both embraced it. We had the great pleasure and blessing of getting married again, by having our marriage validated by a priest. And because we became Catholic, for some reason we had four more children. And because we had those children, we eventually started the first Chesterton Academy. And because we started the first Chesterton Academy, there are now almost 50 other Chesterton Academies in five countries, with more schools in the works. These schools have led to young men becoming priests and young couples getting married in the Catholic Church, and revival of Catholic classical education across the country and across the world.

(Editor’s note: This essay was first posted on July 19, 2022.)

Jill Biden

 

Jill Biden
went for a ride in
a San Antonio cab and asked, "What's the best place to go
to get a good breakfast taco?"

C.S. Lewis Quotations

G.K. Chesterton is one of the most quotable figures of modern times.

One of the men influenced by him, C.S. Lewis, is also eminently quoatble. And, in keeping with that Chesterton influence, some of his quotations sound as if they could have been said by GKC.

“We meet no ordinary people in our lives.”

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”

Here’s a few more from Lewis.

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”

“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...”

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
     - The Magician's Nephew

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. ”

“God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”
     - Mere Christianity

“She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”
     - The Screwtape Letters

“Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.”
     - Mere Christianity

“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.”

“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”
     - Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

“The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.”

Amos

 

The prophet Amos
became justly famous
not for his cookie baking skill,
but for proclaiming God's will.

What's Wrong with the World

 

Chesterton Is Right About What’s Wrong With the World

BOOK PICK: New edition of 1910 classic packs relevance today.

‘What’s Wrong With the World’ was written more than 100 years ago. (photo: Sophia Institute Press)

K.V. Turley BooksJune 14, 2022

Sophia Institute Press has just republished a book with a title that is as perennial as it is thought-provoking: What’s Wrong With the World by G.K. Chesterton. 

Essentially a book of political philosophy, Chesterton lampoons, with forensic wit, what were then faddish ideas in Edwardian Britain. His four targets are: large corporations, even bigger governments, feminism and education. These and the then thinking underpinning them are the public “wrongs” he identifies, alongside an overarching one, namely, man’s fallen human nature. 

First published in 1910, one may well ask: What does What’s Wrong With the World have to say to today’s world? 

Depressingly, the same wrongs are with us still, if receiving fresh expression in the 21st century. Helpfully, Chesterton not only identifies “what’s wrong” with the world but also points out that what people, often erroneously, think is wrong, and then wherein lies the cure of the world’s ills. ...

You can read the rest of this fine review/essay from the National Catholic Register here - https://www.ncregister.com/features/chesterton-is-right-about-what-s-wrong-with-the-world 

A Gilbert/Chesterton Clerhew Book?

I got the online edition of the May/June issue of Gilbert - the print edition has het to arrive - and discovered one of my clerihews is in it.

Robert Burns 

Hid behind some ferns. 

He feared that he might be shot 

By the husband of an auld acquaintance he forgot. 

— Lee Strong, Rochester, New York

As always, I'm pleased when the good folks at Gilbert publish one of my clerihews. Over the years, they have published a number of them, for which I am grateful.

As I've been getting up in years, I've been thinking about compiling some of my poems and publishing them, possibly in individual books for different genres, one of which would be of my clerihews. I spoke with an illustrator about the clerihew book, then back in March I contacted Dale Ahlquist to see if it might be something the Chesterton Society would be interested in publishing. I also mentioned that I thought a large collection of clerihews published in Gilbert would be great.

Dale responded that someone had actually contacted him about doing that, and asked if I would be open to some of my clerihews being included. 

I immediately said yes, and offered to help the person. I also wondered if this was something being done now, or if it might be a while before such a book could be put together. Dale said he had to dig up the email from the person, but given all the hats he is currently wearing  acknowledged that time was not something he did not have a lot of. So the book is down the road. 

I haven't heard anything since, so I don't know the identity of the person who contacted Dale, and if/when the book will be pursued.

I'm still interested in helping. I'd love to be part of the process of compiling and editing it. There have certainly been many wonderful clerihews written by various poets and published in Gilbert over the years. The "Clerihew Corner"  is one of the first features I read when an issue arrives.

So if that person reads this blog, let's talk!

Charles Williams in New Oxford Review

In the most recent issue of New Oxford Review (May 2022)there's a wonderful article about Charles Williams.

Charles Williams in Letters & Remembrances - LOVE DURING WARTIME - By Cicero Bruce

"... Williams’s part in this prolific exchange is accessible thanks to the dutiful research of Roma A. King Jr. King’s edition of Williams’s personal correspondence, published in 2002 under the title To Michal from Serge: Letters from Charles Williams to His Wife Florence, 1939-1945, includes representative selections, painstakingly transcribed by King, from nearly 700 hurriedly handwritten letters. In them we hear Williams at his best — as faithful Christian, loyal husband, caring father, and generous friend — and, occasionally, at his worst — as one who loved human beings but sometimes found them intolerable. What resounds above all else is the voice of a man “honestly struggling,” as King puts it in his introduction, “toward the light beyond the darkness.” ...

The article gives us insights into Williams's faith and fears during the war and separation from Michel due to that war. It additions to excerpts from the letters exchanged with his wife, there is praise for/assessment of Williams by W.H. Auden, Dorothy Sayers, and C.S. Lewis.

A good read.

Saint Matthias Clerihew

The replacement Apostle Matthias
was chosen by lot, not by bias.
Alas, except for his selection.
he's eluded all other historical detection.

Saint Austin Review and Chesterton

 

Anyone who frequents G.K. Chesterton event in the U.S. has encountered Joseph Pearce. He is frequently one of the featured speakers, and will generally have a table with some of his books for sale.

Some of his books. The man, in the spirit of Chesterton, is prolific. He seems to come out with a new book every other month. One wonders how he has time for dinner with his wife.

Pearce writes extensively, and often with a Catholic or religious focus, about literature and writers, o - with books about such figures as Shakespeare C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Pearce is also co-editor of The St. Austin Review (StAR), a Catholic review of culture and ideas with an aim of "Reclaiming Culture." Each issue has a theme - often focusing on a particular writer or movement. including Shakespeare, Dante, Tolkien, Sigrid Undset, T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, and, of course, Chesterton. The writing is intelligent and insightful, sometimes even challenging. 

The most recent issue again turns to Chesterton, taking the title of Pearce's own highly-regarded biography of Chesterton, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton, and using it as a focus for the issue.

Among the articles:

"The Wisdom and Innocence of G.K. Chesterton" by Joseph Pearce
"What Chesterton Has Meant to Me" by Father Peter Milward, SJ

"On What the Mind is For: The Many Delights of Reading Chesterton by Father James V. Schall, SJ

"Chesterton on Mirth" by Christina Colombo

"Little Children, Keep Yourselves form Idols: Possessive Love in Chesterton and Lewis" by Elizabeth Peterson

"Chesterton, Chaucer, and The Canterbury Tales" by Jonathan Thorndike

"Portrait of a Dean: Crossing Swords With Chesterton" by Thomas Banks

"1922: Chesterton, Nosferatu, and the Spirit of Modernism" by K.V. Turley

"Narnia and the Childlike Chesterton" by Father Dwight Longenecker

"The Chesterton Moment Revisited" by Father Benedict Kiely 

I look forward to reading these and the other articles and poetry in the issue. Indeed, StAR and Gilbert are the two periodicals I get that I always read from cover to cover. Of course, I am a fan of Chesterton, a writer myself, and a former English teacher who took the classical approach of linking literature, music and art in my lessons. 

If you have not already discovered StAr, give it a try. The next time Pearce shows up at a Chesterton event go to his table - he generally has some sample issues.

Becoming Boethius: The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis

Church Life Journal has a fascinating essay by Jason Baxter about C.S. Lewis as a medievalist. (And Chesterton gets mentioned!) 

"Perhaps to our surprise, this third Lewis, the medievalist, emerges in the 1962 list that he shared with The Christian Century. When Lewis replied to the editors, he mentioned ten books that shaped his sense of vocation and his philosophy of life, some of which we would expect: 1) George MacDonald’s Phantastes; 2) G.K. Chesterton’s Everlasting Man; 3) Virgil’s Aeneid; 4) The Temple, by George Herbert; 5) William Wordsworth’s Prelude; 6) Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy; 7) Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy; 8) The Life of Samuel Johnson, by James Boswell; 9) Descent into Hell, by Charles Williams; and 10) Arthur James Balfour, Theism and Humanism. Some of these books, even if they have been largely forgotten by us, make sense in light of Lewis’s interest in apologetics. ..."

The essay is an adaptation of the introductory chapter of The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How the Great Book Shaped a Great Mind.

You can read the full essay here.