Plain to the Inward Eye

A collection of essays by a career C . S . Lewis scholar on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis's death.

C. S. Lewis scholar Don W. King has kept a critical eye on the work by and about Lewis for four decades. Now, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis's death, King has put together a collection of his essays and critical reviews organized around four areas. The first deals mainly with what will perhaps be Lewis's longest lasting legacy--his Chronicles of Narnia. The second deals with Lewis's poetry, a neglected area of his work. The third focuses on Lewis and the two women poets with whom he had lasting relationships: ruth Pitter and Joy Davidman. (Lewis and Davidman eventually fell in love and later married, twice.) The fourth offers a critical perspective on the way in which critical interest in Lewis has developed over the last thirty years.

Essays and reviews include:

Narnia and the Seven Deadly Sins
The Wardrobe as Christian Metaphor
The Childlike in George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis
Making the Poor Best of Dull Things: C. S. Lewis as Poet
C. S. Lewis's The Quest of Bleheris as Poetic Prose
The Poetry of Prose: C. S. Lewis, Ruth Pitter, and Perelandra
Fire and Ice: C. S. Lewis and the Love Poetry of Joy Davidman and Ruth Pitter
Review of Shadowlands (film), directed by Richard Attenborough
Review of C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide by Walter Hooper
Review of C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters (3 vols.), by Walter Hooper
Review of The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs
A Review Essay on Recent Books on C. S. Lewis