Charles Williams
The Third Inkling
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- $28.99
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- $28.99
Publisher Description
A lively and readable literary biography of a remarkable personality who was a central member of the Inklings, this book rediscovers the dramatic and contradictory life of a brilliant writer and publisher from a poor London background who became a ground-breaking theologian, fantasy novelist and poet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Williams was overshadowed in the years following his death in 1945 by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien fellow members of the Oxford-based literary group the Inklings but he gets his due in this exhaustively researched biography from Lindop (Travels on the Dance Floor). Williams's formal education ended at 17, but he read omnivorously and rose rapidly at Oxford University Press from proofreader to editor. A tireless workaholic, Williams also wrote novels, plays, essays, tracts, and reams of verse in his spare time, much of it steeped in Christian theology and concerned with the relationship between the spiritual and the sexual what he referred to as "the Church system and the love system." Williams's complex, original vision brought him to the attention of Lewis in 1936 and made him a perfect fit with Lewis's circle of fellow academics and writers. Lindop does a masterful job of relating Williams's expansive bibliography to his intellectual passions and his messy personal life, which was frequently complicated by platonic love affairs with the young female coworkers he mentored. Readers interested in learning more about a writer whose work was highly regarded by T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, among others, will find Lindop's book an informative and accessible introduction.
