Into the Wardrobe

Does anyone know when "The Funeral of a Great Myth" was written? I can't seem to find any source on it's date of authorship.

In the Preface to Christian Reflections, where the essay is printed, Walter Hooper says that it's published in that volume for the first time, but doesn't say when it was actually written. CSL cites a work from 1943 in the essay, so we know it was written after that. One website I looked at said it was "probably written in the 1940's." We'd probably need a dated original manuscript to know definitively...or perhaps Sven, knower of all things related to CSL, can tell us!

I just looked and they don't seem to have it.

I don't really know much more. Lesley Walmsley, the editor of C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, briefly says that it is a development of a portion of the paper Is Theology Poetry?, which was read out at the Oxford Socratic Club in 1945. Lewis thought that he did a poor job in that paper, so he may have written The Funeral of a Great Myth in an attempt to improve on his 1945 effort. That's just speculation on my part.