Walter Hooper’s Papers

Why did Walter Hooper’s friends at the Manuscripts Department of the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina abruptly withdraw his collection of C. S. Lewis-related correspondence from public access shortly after some of its incriminating and embarrassing content was revealed in 1995 in Light in the Shadowlands? A curious non-answer to that question is provided by Hooper in his 1997 reference volume C. S. Lewis: Companion and Guide: “The Curator says: ‘Since the Manuscripts Department continues to receive material from Walter Hooper, the papers are restricted until all additions have been received and processing is complete.”

This seems to mean that so long as Hooper lives, the significant papers he sold to his alma mater in 1980 and 1993 will be withheld from researchers. (They were not, of course, withheld from researchers until after 1995.)