That Hideous Strength.

LEWIS, C.S.

Item Number: 141308

London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1943.

First edition of the final novel in Lewis’ acclaimed Space Trilogy. Octavo, bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery, gilt titles and ruling to the spine, raised bands, gilt ruled to the front and rear panels, gilt signature to the front panel, inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. In fine condition. An exceptional presentation.

According to biographer A. N. Wilson, Lewis began The Space Trilogy after a conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien in which both men lamented the state of contemporary fiction. They agreed that Lewis would write a space-travel story, and Tolkien would write a time-travel one. Tolkien's story only exists as a fragment, published in The Lost Road and other writings (1987) edited by his son Christopher. “[Lewis’s] book describes the struggle of a little group of sane people against a nightmare that nearly conquers the world. A company of mad scientists – or, perhaps, they are not mad, but have merely destroyed in themselves all human feeling, all notion of good and evil – are plotting to conquer Britain, then the whole planet, and then other planets, until they have brought the universe under their control. All superfluous life is to be wiped out, all natural forces tamed, the common people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of scientists, who even see their way to conferring immortal life upon themselves. Man, in short, is to storm the heavens and overthrow the gods, or even to become a god himself – George Orwell, Manchester Evening News, 1945.