February 9th marks the eightieth anniversary of the book The Screwtape Letters that made C. S. Lewis famous. Dedicated to friend and colleague, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Screwtape Letters is a theological novel written in a satirical style. Dr. Monika Hilder, Co-Director of the Inklings Institute of Canada, explains that this book “of thirty-one fictional letters, written and set in the Second World War, gives Hell’s view of how temptation works in a human life. In the voice of the senior devil Screwtape giving advice to the junior devil Wormwood under his tutelage on how best to seduce his appointed human, referred to as the Patient, Lewis shows how through supposedly everyday trifling choices a devil may secure a human soul for Hell—or lose him or her to Heaven.”
The significance of this title as Dr. Hilder points out “… Lewis was able to describe much that we ought to know about ourselves. And so, some of us acknowledge that our beloved Tolkien was sometimes wrong—and we are glad, supremely glad, that The Screwtape Letters is among the books whereby we can agree with John Updike’s comment: “I read Lewis for comfort and pleasure many years ago, and a glance into the books revives my old admiration.”
The Screwtape Letters is one title from The Dr. Hans and Colleen Kouwenberg C.S. Lewis and Friends Collections that was donated to Trinity Western University in the spring of 2019. Envisioned as a teaching resource to support scholarship and enrich the broader Christian community, the donation consists predominately of the work of C.S. Lewis, although it includes other Inklings’ members and fiction influencers: Owen Barfield, J.A.W. Bennett, Roger Lancelyn Green, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and George MacDonald. The collection includes first editions, publishers’ file copies, and titles signed by C.S. Lewis, Walter Hooper (Lewis’ editor), and Owen Barfield.
Learn more about the significance of The Screwtape Letters, when The Dr. Hans and Colleen Kouwenberg C.S. Lewis and Friends Collections room opens in late spring.
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