Charles Williams: An Exploration of His Life and Work

by Alice Mary Hadfield

A biography of the British editor, critic, poet, novelist, dramatist, and theologian describes his influence on Auden, Lewis, Sayers, Eliot, and Tolkien

Genres: Biography

282 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 1983

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charles Walter Stansby Williams (20 September 1886 – 15 May 1945) was a British writer. He wrote novels (at least seven), plays (dozens), poetry, theology, literary criticism, biographies (at least seven), introductions to the literature of others, and reviews of detective fiction (seriously). Perhaps his best-known works are his supernatural novels: War in Heaven (1930), Many Dimensions (1930), The Place of the Lion (1931), The Greater Trumps (1932), Shadows of Ecstasy (1933), Descent into Hell (1937), and All Hallows' Eve (1945). He was a member of the Inklings and this he influenced and was influenced by C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Adam Fox. He was employed by the Oxford University Press from 1908 until he ceased to breathe in 1945. He regarded as one of his greatest accomplishments his editing of the first English-language version of the works of Søren Kierkegaard. His private life is not as well examined as his literary and professional life in this volume. One learns too little of his marriage to Florence Conway and almost nothing of his affair with Phyllis Jones. This may be because the author was the subject's friend.

[Judith Shadford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating treatment of an amazing person--chiefly, I think for his prodigious (nearly too small a word) reading and writing. On staff for the Oxford University Press for nearly his entire career, Williams read--many times ALL of the classic writers, provided forewords to new editions, discovered new writers that OUP should publish, and wrote. ALL THE TIME. I feel out of breath just thinking of the scope of his life. Just for the record, he wrote theological treatises on the history of the church, the Holy Spirit. He read Dante in Italian, then took the figure of Beatrice and spent years developing his sense of the revelation of love that leads eventually to God. His work on the Arthurian legends and myths was nearly the work of a lifetime, which included books of verse--difficult, startling works. And he wrote 7 novels that have been called "supernatural thrillers", though not in this biography. Oh, also a beloved friend of CS Lewis, Tolkien to a degree, and Dorothy Sayers.