Two items sent by British scribe C. S. Lewis to his close friend Hugo Dyson. The first is an ALS signed “C. S. Lewis,” one page, 5.5 x 8.5, March 9, 1949. The handwritten letter reads: “The first piece in this little ‘resurrection pie’ develops the theory wh. you expressed interest in last night.” The second item, the referenced “resurrection pie,” is a scarce first edition of Lewis’s book Transposition and Other Addresses, published in London by Geoffrey Bles in 1949. The work contains a selection of the addresses Lewis gave during and after World War II, sermons that were meant to bring courage and hope during a time of great peril in human history. It includes Transposition, Learning in Wartime, Membership, The Inner Ring, and The Weight of Glory, a famous sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford. The letter is in fine condition; the softcover book exhibits some edgewear and a split to the front flap of its jacket.
The book’s preface, as written by Lewis, in part: ‘This book contains a selection of the too numerous addresses which I was induced to give during the late war and the years that immediately followed it. All were composed in response to personal requests and for particular audiences, without thought of subsequent publication. As a result, in one or two places they seem to repeat, though they really anticipated, sentences of mine which have already appeared in print. When I was asked to make this collection I supposed that I could remove such overlappings, but I was mistaken. There comes a time (and it need not always be a long one) when a composition belongs so definitely to the past that the author himself cannot alter it much without the feeling that he is producing a kind of forgery. The period from which these pieces date was, for all of us, an exceptional one; and though I do not think I have altered any belief that they embody I could not now recapture the tone and temper in which they were written. Nor would those who wanted to have them in a permanent form be pleased with a patchwork. It has therefore seemed better to let them go with only a few verbal corrections.’
Hugo Dyson (1896–1975) was an English academic and a member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group that included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The latter, with Dyson, helped C. S. Lewis to convert to Christianity in 1931, particularly after a long conversation as they strolled on Addison's Walk at Oxford.
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