C.S. Lewis and Anthony Spearing Autograph Correspondence Collection.

LEWIS, C.S. [Anthony Colin Spearing].

$27,500.00

Item Number: 134067

Rare collection of correspondence between C.S. Lewis and his PhD student Anthony Colin Spearing including an autograph letter signed by and entirely in the hand of C.S. Lewis. Folio, the collection includes the original composition of Spearing’s 1957 English Tripos essay: “The Translation of English Verse (An Essay with some Specimen Translations)” which he sent to Lewis for edits and contains Lewis’ marginal notes; two pages of critical notes entirely in Lewis’ hand on his Magdalene College Cambridge letterhead containing 28 numbered notes and suggestions for edits to the Spearing’s composition; an autograph letter signed and entirely in the hand of C.S. Lewis to Spearing which reads in part: “The Kilns Headington Quarry Oxford Dear Shearing ‘He’s a fool without his Book’, said Caliban, and you catch me without most of mine. The best I can do by Dead Reckoning is as follows: The bit from H. does not seem to me to make conciseness exactly ‘the aim’ of rhetoric… I’m sorry I can’t give you anything better. Hearty congratulations on the fellowship Yours C.S. Lewis; and a four-page typed treatise written by Spearing titled “C.S. Lewis as a Research Supervisor” documenting his experience under the tutelage of Lewis which reads in part: “There may not be many people still living who had C.S. Lewis as a supervisor of research for a PhD. I am one of them, so it seems worth setting down what I remember of that experience while I still can. C.S. Lewis and I arrived at Cambridge in the same year, I from school as a freshman and he from Oxford as the first occupant of the new chair of Medieval and Renaissance English… I wasn’t assigned a research supervisor at all, and it wasn’t until halfway through the Michaelmas term that I learned I was to be supervised by C. S. Lewis… Lewis was extremely conscientious in commenting in detail on anything I submitted to him, and he most kindly went on doing that after I had ceased to be his supervisee…” In near fine condition. An exceptional collection offering an intimate glimpse into Lewis’ years as chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge.