Into the Wardrobe

I'm looking into purchasing C.S. Lewis's Poems and am trying to decide how best to do this and get all published material.

From what I understand, there are at least five collections of poems by C.S. Lewis:
Spirits in Bondage (ISBN 1596053720)
Poems (ISBN 0156027690)
Narrative Poems (ISBN 0156027984)
The Collected Poems of C.S. Lewis (ISBN 0006278337) - published in 1994
The Complete Poems (ISBN 0007157061) - published in 2006

My understanding is that "The Collected Poems of C.S. Lewis" includes "Spirits of Bondage" and "Poems" as well as 17 other previously unpublished poems. If one purchases this and "Narrative Poems", one has all of his poetry.

My question is, what is "The Complete Poems"? Is it all of the previous material? Does it included the extra 17 poems from "The Collected Poems"? Has ANYONE ever heard of this before?

The Complete Poems supposedly combines the contents of The Collected Poems and Narrative Poems. It's a hard find, as not very many copies were published. I've never seen a copy of it, but I have the other two.

One note, if you're looking for The Collected Poems in used bookstores. The title page does state the name of the book is The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis, but, the front cover and spine only say Poems. This is very confusing as there is an earlier, much shorter collection with that one word title. The 1994 collection has the ISBN you mentioned above, the cover is illustrated with a tropical island seen through a looking glass and traversed by a rope, with the name C. S. Lewis imposed on the rope and the title Poems above that.

Double post. See below.

Thanks so much! I'll be looking for either Collected Poems and Narrative Poems or The Complete Poems.

Any idea why The Complete Poems was a limited printing and hasn't been reprinted? Seems like Lewis fans would salivate over such a collection.

I suspect the estate and the publisher over-estimated the saleability of the book. There were a few collections released about the same time, possibly hoping to ride on the success of the LWW movie. Another excellent collection from about that time I do have is of all of Lewis' essays and shorter fiction. It also sold very few copies.

I've been in contact with a representative from HarperCollins and discovered that this book was actually canceled before it was printed (this explains why I can't even find expensive used copies). It never made it to release. This is a real pity about The Complete Poems. I'm trying to get in touch with HarperCollins to let them know that there is some demand, even if it is minimal.

I'm in the process of trying to track down the Essay Collection: Literature, Philosophy and Short Stories book (I already have the companion Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church).This book would go nicely with those two, along with Selected Books and the Signature Collection.

Also, I wonder, since they seemed to be publishing collections to include all of his non-university published material, if there were plans for a volume of his other unpublished essays (those from Selected Literary Essays, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literatureand the ones from God in the Dock and On Stories that weren't included in the other Essay Collections). If so, I suppose this volume would have been dropped at the same time as The Complete Poems. Pity really, for all of us C.S. Lewis completists.