The book Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis is actually three books in one volume. The first is The Pilgrim’s Regress, the first book he wrote after his conversion to Christianity, which I read earlier this year and reviewed.
The second is Christian Reflections. This is a compilation of Lewis’s papers, talks, and essays published in 1967, four years after his death. They were collected, edited, and published by Walter Hooper, who was Lewis’s secretary near the end of his life and became his literary executor after his death. He took on the job of organizing the mass of Lewis’s writings into collections.
This book has items composed from 1939 to 1962. The fourteen items are arranged more or less chronologically. The first is “Christianity and Literature”, a paper Lewis read to an Oxford society in the 1930s, and which was included in his first collection of essays, Rehabilitations, published in 1939. I read this in one sitting back in 2019, and found it to be a great help. I found several things to inspire my writing.
The next was “Christianity and Culture”. Published in a magazine in 1940, this essay generated a debate with several critics—a debate that played out in the pages of the magazine. This book includes Lewis’s three contributions to the discussion, the original essay and two responses to his critics. I’ve been looking for the other site of the discussion. I found one item. When I find the other, I’ll come back to this for a fuller reading. I reviewed this essay previously on the blog. I read this in both August 2019 and September 2021, though I’m not sure I finished it the first time.
After this, the essays are a mixed bag. I’m not going to give all the titles here. I read them slowly, in many sittings, in 2021 and 2022. Many of them I found hard to digest. Several I don’t remember at all. I read them, at least according to the notation in the book I did, but I couldn’t tell you what they are about. Were they too difficult for me, or did I read distractedly, without the wherewithal to comprehend what Lewis was saying? The only way to know is to read them again.
And that I shall do, though I know not when. The third book in this volume is God in the Dock, another of Hooper’s posthumous collections of Lewis essays. I’ve read a couple in this, but have yet to tackle this formidable looking document. I’m going to read something lighter before I do.
What about Christian Reflections? Is it worth reading? Is it a keeper? Yes, it is worth reading, but probably only for the dedicated Lewis reader. It is available as a separate volume, if you want to pick up a copy. As to it being a keeper, yes, for sure. Not only because I have more to read in this 3-in-one book, not only because I don’t want to break up my C.S. Lewis collection just yet (if ever), but also because I need to re-read some of these, sometime years hence. Perhaps I’ll still be posting at this blog, and will have something more to say about it.