A review of the wide range of work (and famous friends) of an unjustly forgotten author.

1. LS510 Presentation for Dr. Gold
by Clay Waters
December 14, 2017

2. Charles Williams—
The Most Interesting
“Inkling”
A review of the wide range of work (and
famous friends)of an unjustly forgotten
author.

3. Williams, The Inklings, & Eliot
• Best known today for his famous friends J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis
at Oxford University among The Inklings
• Also friends with T.S. Eliot
“I think he was a man of unusual genius, and regard his work as
important. But it has an importance of a kind not easy to explain.” --
T.S. Eliot

4. Why Study Williams?
• Lewis, Eliot, Tolkien: Known Quantities
• Wholly original thinker, writer, & personality
• Renowned in his time
• Just plain weird
“A natural and pure originality marked everything that C.W.
wrote....There is nothing worn or common or dull in any of his work,
no padding, no borrowed thought.” -- Alice Mary Hadfield

5. If He’s So Great, Why Is He So Obscure?
• Insufficient initials (!?)
• Christian fantasy no longer in style (?)
• Decline in religion in UK (?)
• He died a week after V-E day ended World War II
• Wife withheld letters

6. Where to Start?
• Grevel Lindop’s biography The Third Inkling (2015)
• Gale’s Literary Criticism (UA database)
• UA Collections
• The Marion Wade Center archives at Wheaton College
• Inexpensive ebooks in public domain

8. Best Known Today for His Strange Novels –
“Spiritual Shockers”
• War in Heaven (1930)
• Many Dimensions (1930)
• The Place of the Lion (1931)
• Shadows of Ecstasy (1933, written
1926)
• The Greater Trumps (1932)
• Descent Into Hell (1937)
• All Hallows’ Eve (1945)
Best resource: Literature Resource
Center: Charles Williams: Overview. St.
James Guide to Fantasy Writers.

9. Williams’ Poetry: Slow Start, Brilliant Finish
• Found his voice with Taliessin
Through Logres (1938) and The
Region of the Summer Stars
(1944)
• Where to start: Sorina Higgins’
The Oddest Inkling blog

10. (Odd) Theology
Ideas of Substitution, Co-inherence
• The Descent of the Dove
• He Came Down from Heaven
• The Figure of Beatrice, a Study in Dante

11. Explaining Williams’ Quirky Theology

12. Occult Interests
• Made devout admirers defensive
• Membership in secret societies
• Intense interest in Tarot and ritual
• Places to search: Lindop’s bio for Williams’
correspondence
• Novels

13. Williams’ Poetry Lectures
in London and Oxford
• No recordings have surfaced
• Lindop bio: rapturous first-person accounts
• Transcripts in Oxford archives

14. Charles Williams’ Other Writings
• Biographies not well-regarded
• A single short story, “And May They Be Forever
Damned”
• Literary criticism, usually poetry
• Collected Plays
• Stephen Barber essay on Wililams’ poetry
criticism:
http://www.charleswilliamssociety.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/CW-as-literary-critic.pdf

15. Charles Williams’ Resources
BOOKS:
• The Third Inkling by Grevel Lindop
JOURNALS:
• Mythlore
• VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College
• Renascence at Marquette University
SCHOLARLY WEBSITES:
• http://www.charleswilliamssociety.org.uk/the-catalog/
• https://theoddestinkling.wordpress.com/
• https://www.wheaton.edu/media/wade-
center/files/collections/manuscript-
listings/WilliamsMS_20171017.pdf

16. References
• Browning, L.R. (2012). Charles Williams’s Anti-Modernist Descent into Hell. Mythlore, 31(1-2), pp. 69-84.
• Eliot, T.S. (1945). Preface. In All Hallows’ Eve. London, England: Faber and Faber.
• Hadfield, A.M. (1959). An Introduction to Charles Williams. London, England: R. Hale.
• Higgins, S. (2011). Is a ‘Christian’ Mystery Story Possible? Charles Williams’s War in Heaven as a Generic Case Study. Mythlore,
30(1-2), pp. 77-89. Lindop, Grevel. (2015). The Third Inkling. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
• Lindop, G. (2015). The Third Inkling. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
• Williams, C. (1937). Descent Into Hell. London, England: Faber and Faber.
• Williams, C. (1935) “Et in Sempiternum Pereant” [“And May They Be Forever Damned”]. Urbana: Illinois: Project Gutenberg.
Retrieved June 22, 2017 from http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800821.txt.
• Williams, C. (1938). Taliessin Through Logres. London, England: Oxford University Press.
• Williams, C. (1930). War in Heaven. London, England: Victor Gollancz. Pictures: Eliot via Nobel Prize, Lewis via wiki, Tolkien via
IMDB, many via Abebooks, Amazon.
• PHOTOS: Eliot via Nobel Prize, Lewis via wiki, Tolkien via IMDB, Williams via Charles Williams archive; book covers via
Abebooks, Amazon.