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Even while Roger Lancelyn Green and I were writing this biography we knew it would someday need revising. C.S. Lewis was a prolific letter-writer and, since the book was published in 1974, many new letters have come to light. Numerous reminiscences by former students and others have also been published since that time. Besides this, a new generation of Lewis readers was coming along, and we knew that, besides incorporating much new material into our book, certain adjustments in the portrayal of Lewis and his world would be needed.

It is a matter of great sadness to me that Roger and I were not able to work on this new edition of the biography together. Roger Lancelyn Green died on 8 October 1987, and I have had to revise it by myself. Even so, I do not think my old friend would find it a very different book from the one we wrote together. We expected further information to come to light about, among other things, the Inklings, Lewis’s election to a chair at Cambridge, and his marriage to Joy Davidman, and this has meant the book has ‘grown’ by two additional chapters. Still, while I have been the sole reviser, this new edition developed out of plans Roger Lancelyn Green and I made together, and it remains as much his book as mine. We were sorry our original publisher had an aversion to footnotes; I know Roger would be glad to see references to all published and unpublished writings given in the new edition.

C.S. Lewis’s beloved brother, Warnie, died shortly before the first edition of the biography was published. If he were still alive I would thank him again for the help and encouragement he gave us. The extended treatment of the Inklings in this revised biography owes much to Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis, ed. Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead (1982). I am grateful, as well, to the C.S. Lewis Company for allowing me to quote so extensively from the unpublished letters and papers of C.S. Lewis.

Many others have helped with this new book. I owe particular thanks to my co-author’s son, Richard Lancelyn Green, for sharing his father’s thoughts on C.S. Lewis and helping me in a hundred ways. Of what Lewis called ‘unambiguous debts’ those to whom I owe the most are Dr Francis Warner, Professor Emrys Jones, Dr Barbara Everett, Douglas Gresham, Dr A.J. Reyes, Dr Jeremy Dyson, Professor James Como, Dr Judith Priestman of the Bodleian Library, and my copy-editor, Steve Gove. I am grateful to Michael Ward and Scott Johnson for helping with the proofs. Finally, while this biography continues to be dedicated to C.S. Lewis and W.H. Lewis – Jack and Warnie – I offer my share in the revised book to Roger Lancelyn Green.

WALTER HOOPER