by Sven » August 10th, 2009, 8:33 pm
I can't give you a citation at the moment, but I believe I read somewhere (probably in Hooper's
Companion) that the Bodleian and the Wade Center in Wheaton have an arrangement whereby each provides copies of all the letters and manuscripts held by one to the other. I also believe the Bodleian has a copy of the Lewis family papers (material about Jack & Warnie's parents) as edited by Warnie Lewis.
There are a couple of items I'd like to look at if I was ever there. In 1983, the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society published a hundred copies of some sort of collaborative essay by Jack Lewis and Owen Barfield titled
Cretaceous Perambulator (The Re-examination of). Then, in 1990, they published a similar booklet titled
Mark vs Tristram: Correspondence between C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, and this one was illustrated by Pauline Baynes. The Bodleian has copies of both.
According to a letter that Lewis sent his father, his favorite place to read in the Bodleian was in Duke Humphrey's Library, at a chair with a window to his left that looked down on the Exeter College garden. See if they'll let you camp out for a while
Rat! he found breath to whisper, shaking. Are you afraid?
Afraid? murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.
Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet -- and yet -- O, Mole, I am afraid!
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.