The Lewis Legacy Issue 78

Update on Timothy Stoen, C. S. Lewis Foundation Lawyer

In February 1998 Timothy Stoen of Mendocino, CA, 60, filed his candidacy for the 2nd State Senate District seat. It was in 1994 that Stan Mattson engaged Stoen to represent the C. S. Lewis Foundation and suppress Light in the Shadowlands. Stoen promptly launched a vigorous campaign of threats and falsehoods about the book that he did not abandon until Read More ›

Walter Hooper’s Famous Chapel Hill Collection

Manuscripts Department Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill SOUTHERN HISTORICAL COLLECTION#4236 WALTER MCGEHEE HOOPER PAPERSInventory Abstract: Correspondence of Walter McGehee Hooper (1931- ) and colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and admirers of C. S. Lewis. Included are a few letters from Lewis and his brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis, to Hooper. Some of the correspondence contains anecdotal material about Read More ›

Just for Fun

Who Is This Man? Born in 1898, of completely British, partly Welsh, descent. Acquired the nickname Jack early in life and always used it. Had black hair and brown eyes and a medium complexion. His grandfather was a Protestant minister in a famous city, but he did not inherit his grandfather’s faith. Could never break his teenage addiction to smoking. Read More ›

What is the Truth?

“As per the request of Walter Hooper,” files in Box 2 are closed until 2012 or notification of the death of the writers. But the contents of Box 1 are allegedly open to researchers. Is this really true? Some of the letters in Box 1 disprove some of Hooper’s most important claims, such as his purported secretaryship. When one researcher Read More ›

A Disclaimer to Disclaim

In August 1998 James Prothero, editor of The Lamp-Post, wrote to certainother authors of entries in the C. S. Lewis Reader’s Encyclopedia. He called the book shockingly “Lindskoogian,” and said Walter Hooper had warned him that Lindskoog can now imply to the innocent public that all the contributors agree with her opinions. Therefore Prothero decided to write a formal disclaimer. Read More ›

Weary of the Lewis Cult

David Mills begins the somewhat condescending introduction to Pilgrim’s Guide, his collection of essays, this way: “Having now spent several months [only months?] in the Lewis literature, I must admit to sharing many readers’ weariness of the Lewis cult [what cult?], and to feeling slightly irritated when someone [who?] prefaces a statement on almost any question with ‘It’s like Lewis Read More ›

The Secret History of C. S. Lewis’s “Interesting Relics”

Near the end of the Hooper Papers Inventory (see “Other Material” in the previous column) one reads of “a few pages of notes about the contents of Lewis’s home in Oxford.” But this is a very erroneous description. These are five small pages of Lewis’s meticulous handwritten instructions (with a sketch) telling Walter Hooper exactly how to clear out Lewis’s Read More ›

25 Most Influential Religious Leaders

On 6 September 1998 the PBS program “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly” named and identified the world’s 25 religious leaders of the 20th Century who have been most influential in the United States. The list included Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Buber, the Dalai Lama, Dorothy Day, Mary Baker Eddy, Mohandas Gandhi, Billy Graham, Gustavo Guitierrez, Carl Henry, Abraham Heschel, Pope Read More ›

The Lewis Legacy-Issue 78, Autumn 1998 From the Mailbag

I was shocked, to say the least, both at the scandal [set forth in Light in the Shadowlands] and the fact that nothing is being done about this by the publishers and media. Any number of evidences you adduce would, even if considered in isolation, be sufficient to make your case convincing; but when the evidence is considered as a Read More ›

“Very Controversial Walter Hooper” “Firmly But Charitably Put in His Place”

First Things is a journal of conservative political opinion and commentary edited (and largely written) by Richard John Neuhouse, a Roman Catholic. The current issue (October 1998) contains Michael Aeschliman’s fine essay “C. S. Lewis on Mere Science” and the following unsigned review of The C. S. Lewis Reader’s Encyclopedia in the “Briefly Noted” section (pp. 77-78): “A hundred years Read More ›