The other night I noticed an amusing error, or what I think is an error, in Pauline Baynes’ illustration of Drinian, Lucy, Reepicheep, et al. in Caspian’s cabin, in _The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_, p. 29 of the hardcover edition: A globe is standing on a small table. But the world of which Narnia is a part is not spherical---is it? It physically borders Aslan’s country, which is endless. Not a globe, like our world. Of course, this isn’t verified till the end of _Dawn Treader_, but the one thing that Caspian and companions seem quite sure of NOT doing on their voyage is circumnavigating a sphere. Hmm.
Second, I recommend the following website:
http://www.solcon.nl/arendsmilde/cslewi ... /index.htm
Arend Smilde is a translator of CSL into Dutch. Her notes on several of Lewis’s books are fascinating, as she’s worked hard to track down the sources of many quotations and the meanings of many obscure phrases. For example, I was delighted to learn, after all these years, that in the line of poetry by David Lyndsay from which Lewis drew the title _That Hideous Strength_ (referring to the Tower of Babel), "Lyndsay was certainly using the word Strength here in its now archaic sense of ‘stronghold’ or ‘fortress’."
She also performs the invaluable service of giving the full text of J. B. S. Haldane’s hostile review of the Space Trilogy. Many of us have read Lewis’s unfinished but fascinating rebuttal to Haldane’s review, "A Reply to Professor Haldane," but far and few, far and few are those who have actually read Haldane’s original attack. Smilde also gives a review of Lewis by George Orwell that few us will have seen before and a useful review of A. N. Wilson’s biography of Lewis.
Larry Gilman