CS Lewis Personal Library

Introduction: CS Lewis Personal Library – The Shaping of a Mind

Born on November 29, 1898 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Clive Staples Lewis (CS Lewis), was a writer, critic, Anglican scholar and theologian. As a boy, he read voraciously, wrote about an imaginary world,  called Boxen – “Animal-Land”, which was inhabited by talking beasts. At Oxford, CS Lewis studied the classics, philosophy and English. Between 1925 and 1954, he was the fellow of English language and literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. Close male friends – his brother Warren, JRR Tolkien, English scholar Hugo Dyson, novelist Charles Williams and philosopher Owen Barfield – influenced his thinking. Along with some other men, they met weekly for their group Inklings. JRR Tolkien questioned Lewis’ atheist thinking, and prompted the spiritual evolution of his friend.

CS Lewis became well-known in Britain from his talks on the BBC from 1941 to 1944. He wrote many bestsellers, and is known for The Chronicle of Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia Box Set: The Magician's Nephew; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The H), a series of seven children’s books.

“The author described the Christian meanings of the series thus: the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, was about “the Crucifixion and Resurrection”; Prince Caspian dealt with the “restoration of the true religion after a corruption”; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, “the spiritual life”; The Silver Chair, “the continuing war against the powers of darkness”; The Horse and His Boy, “the calling and conversion of the heathen”; The Magician's Nephew, “the Creation and how evil entered Narnia”; and The Last Battle, “the coming of Antichrist (the ape), the end of the world and the last judgment.”” St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, p 150 – 151

In 1956, CS Lewis married Joy Davidson, who died from bone cancer four years later. He took the death of his wife very hard and wrote about the experience in A Grief Observed. Lewis died on November 22, 1963, the same day that John F Kennedy was shot.

CS Lewis’ mind was shaped by the books he read, and the people with whom he had deep conversations. Looking at the books in his personal library, one again, as with other successful people, he was interested in books from many different genres. Thanks to the efforts of the organization Library Thing that made it possible for me to take a look into the personal library of CS Lewis.

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Some of the Books from CS Lewis Personal Library

1. The Plays And Poems Of George Chapman: The Tragedies (1910), George Chapman
2. Plays and Poems of George Chapman: The Comedies, George Chapman
3. King Wren: The Youth of Henri IV [originally titled: Die Jugend des Koenigs Henri Quatrre], Heinrich Mann
4. Complete works of Robert Browning (Complete Works of Robert Browning 6: With Variant Readings & Annotations (Complete Works Robert Browning)), Robert Browning
5. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri
6. Chaucer: the knight's tale (The Knight's Tale: In its original form and with a modern translation), Geoffrey Chaucer
7. The Myth of Oedipus, Colin Hardie
8. Little Arthur's History of England, Lady Maria Callcott
9. The Essays of Elia (The Works of Charles Lamb), Charles Lamb
10. Sir Thomas More: A Selection From His Works, As Well In Prose As In Verse, Forming A Sequel To “life And Times Of Sir Thomas More.”…, Saint Thomas
11. Anthology of Assorted Works (The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper (Classic Reprint)), William Cowper
12. A Time To Dance, C. Day Lewis
13. The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Franklin
14. History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, The, A Longman Cultural Edition for History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, The, A Longman Cultural Edition, Henry Fielding
15. The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling, Henry Fielding
16. Les Aventures De Télémaque, Fils D'ulysse, François de Salignac de La Mothe- Fénelon
17. Poems (The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950), T. S. Eliot
18. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, George Eliot
19. Egil's Saga (Penguin Classics) (Egils Saga Skallagrimssonar)
20. Poems (The Poems of William Dunbar), William Dunbar
21. Tales Of The Caucasus – The Ball of Snow and Sultanetta, Alexandre Dumas
22. Olympe de Clèves, Alexandre Dumas
23. Arrows of Desire, Joseph Ditchburn
24. The Revolutionary Epick
    The Revolutionary Epick, Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli
25. David Copperfield (Penguin Classics), Charles Dickens
26. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Charles Dickens
27. The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside, Mark Akenside
28. Charles Lamb (Charles Lamb [by Alfred Ainger]; Adventures of Ulysses, Guy Faux, etc. [by Charles Lamb] (The Life and Works of Charles Lamb)), Alfred Ainger
29. Selected Poems, Conrad Aiken
30. The Foresters Wife, Margot Robert Adamson
31. The Cuckoo and Other Bird Mysteries,, Bernard Acworth
32. Early Mediaeval French Lyrics, Claude Colleer Abbott
33. Interludes and Poems, Lascelles Abercrombie
34. A skeleton outline of Greek history: Chronologically arranged, Evelyn Abbott
35. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Edwin Abbott
36. Ghosts & two other plays, Henrik Ibsen
37. Brand: A Dramatic Poem (1899), Henrik Ibsen
38. The Genius and the Goddess: A Novel, Aldous Huxley
39. Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley
40. The Age of Chaucer (The Age of Chaucer (The Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol. 1)), Boris Ford
41. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, David Hume
42. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Signet Classics), Victor Hugo
43. A High Wind in Jamaica (A Keith Jennison book), Richard Arthur Warren Hughes
44. Essays & Addresses On the Philosophy of Religion: -1921, Freiherr von Friedrich Hügel
45. Motives and Mechanisms of the Mind: An Introduction to Psychopathology and Applied Psychology, Eric Graham Howe
46. A Commentary On Herodotus, Volume 1, Books 1-4, Walter Wybergh How
47. The citizen of the world: or, letters from a Chinese philosopher, residing in London, to his friends in the East., Oliver Goldsmith
48. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin Classics), Edward Gibbon
49. The Life of Charlotte Bronte (Penguin Classics), Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
50. The Steele Glas (The Steele Glas etc: Certayne Notes of Instruction in English Verse; the Steele Glas; the Complaynt of Philomeme (Arber's English Reprints)), George Gascoigne
51. The Man of Feeling (Oxford World's Classics), Henry Mackenzie
52. The Egoist, George Meredith
53. Typee, and, Billy Budd (Herman Melville's Complete Novels, Short Stories and Poems: Moby Dick, Typee, Billy Budd, Sailor, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-man and More), Herman Melville
54. Redburn (Herman Melville : Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick (Library of America)), Herman Melville
55. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
56. Mental seduction and menticide; the psychology of thought control and brain-washing, Joost Abraham Maurits Meerloo
57. Geoffrey Trease, Margaret Meek
58. Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, Helen Waddell
59. Fantastic traveller, Maude Meagher
60. Milton's poems (Complete Poems and Major Prose), John Milton
61. When We Were Very Young (Winnie-the-Pooh), A. A. Milne
62. Queen's Music, Margaret J. Miller
63. Beast In View, Margaret Millar
64. The Three Brides, Charlotte Mary Yonge
65. The Young Step-Mother, Charlotte Mary Yonge
66. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Frances Amelia Yates
67. Utilitarianism, Liberty & Representative Government, John Stuart Mill
68. York Minster Screen Being a Specimen of the Yorkshire Dialect as Spoken in the North Riding, Raymond Burton
69. A System of Logic, John Stuart Mill
70. Selected modern English essays (Modern English Essays: 1st Ser (World's Classics), Modern English Essays: 2nd Ser (World's Classics)), Sir Humphrey Sumner Milford
71. Portrait of a parson, Ursula Roberts
72. Selections from ancient Irish poetry, Kuno Meyer
73. Elected silence: The Autobiography of Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton
74. The Friendly Town; a Little Book for the Urbane, E. V. Lucas
75. Growing Up, Barbara Lucas
76. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, Roger Sherman Loomis
77. The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Cambridge Edition, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
78. The sea lady: a tissue of moonshine, H. G. Wells
79. The Sleeper Awakes, H. G. Wells
80. The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind, H. G. Wells
81. Glimpses of Mennonite History & Doctrine, John Christian Wenger
82. The Journal of John Wesley, John Wesley
83. The Elements of English Grammar, Alfred Slater West
84. The Vintage, Anthony West
85. Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy, Rebecca West
86. Under the Red Robe, Stanley John Weyman
87. Six Plays by Contemporaries of Shakespeare, Charles Bickersteth Wheeler
88. On the Study of Words, Richard Chenevix Trench
89. Doctor Claudius, A True Story, F. Marion Crawford
90. Khaled, A Tale of Arabia, F. Marion Crawford
91. The Misfortunes of Elphin and Rhododaphne, Thomas Love Peacock
92. The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
93. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (Dover Fine Art, History of Art), Walter Pater
94. Plato and Platonism, Walter Pater
95. Pensées et Opuscles (Pensées and Other Writings (Oxford World's Classics)), Blaise Pascal
96. The Carpathian Castle, Jules Verne
97. From the Earth to the Moon (Bantam Classics), Jules Verne
98. Around The World In 80 Days, Jules Verne
99. An Icelandic prose reader, with notes, grammar, and glossary, Guðbrandur Vigfússon
100. Cruise of the Conrad: A Journal of a Voyage round the World, undertaken and carried out in the Ship JOSEPH CONRAD, 212 Tons, in the Years 1934, 1935 and 1936 by way of Good Hope, the East Indies, the South Seas and Cape Horn, Alan Villiers
101. The rehearsal, George Villiers
102. The Gentle Art of Lexicography (As Pursued and Experienced by an Addict) Eric Partridge
103. Adventuring Among Words: The Language Library, Eric Partridge
104. Vergili Maronis Opera (P. Vergili Maronis Opera V3, Containing The Last Six Books Of The Aeneid: The Works Of Virgil, With A Commentary (1871)), Virgil
105. Völsunga Saga: the story of the Volsungs [and] Niblungs, with certain songs from the Elder Edda, H. Halliday Sparling
106. The Best of Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker
107. The Napoleon of Notting Hill, G. K. Chesterton
108. Man Who Knew Too Much, G. K. Chesterton
109. Essays of today, Francis Henry Pritchard
110. The Story Of A Lifetime…, Lady Eliza Chambers Priestley
111. History of the Conquest of Peru, William H. Prescott
112. World of Wonder: an Introduction to Imaginative Literature / Foreword by Edith Mirrielees, Fletcher Pratt
113. British diarists, Baron Arthur Ponsonby
114. The Struggle For Sea Power (1903), Margaret Bertha Synge
115. The Travels of Marco Polo: The Illustrated Edition (The Illustrated Editions), Marco Polo
116. The Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron, Edward John Trelawny

Randomly Selected Books from C.S. Lewis' library

1. They Were Defeated (20th Century Classics), Dame Rose Macaulay
2.  Royal Indiscretion, Richard Marsh
3. Lady Hester, or, Ursula's Narrative, Charlotte Mary Yonge
4. Clever Woman of the Family, Charlotte Mary Yonge
5. The English Carmelites, Lancelot Capel Sheppard
6. A book of British ballads, R. Brimley Johnson
7. Under the Red Robe, Stanley John Weyman

CS Lewis’ Favorite Authors

1. Saint Athanasius
2. Patriarch of Alexandria
3. Saint Augustine
4. Bishop of Hippo
5. Jane Austen
6. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
7. Geoffrey Chaucer
8. K. Chesterton
9. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
10. Samuel Johnson
11. Thomas à Kempis
12. George MacDonald
13. John Milton
14. William Morris
15. Blaise Pascal
16. Sir Walter Scott
17. Edmund Spenser
18. Thomas Aquinas
19. William Wordsworth