In the last few years, we’ve had a lot of lost manuscripts begin to surface from the likes of C.S. Lewis’ friend J.R.R. Tolkien. From The Children of Hurin to The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, the wealth of literature from Tolkien has been expanded greatly, and it’s about time that something new from Lewis has been discovered. Communications Professor Steven Beebe of Texas State discovered a lost manuscript fragment in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.
While there is no evidence that Tolkien ever started work on the project, the beginnings of a book that was to be a collaborative effort have been uncovered. According to a letter Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher in 1944, he had planned to write a book with Lewis called Language and Human Nature. The collaborative effort, with Lewis being the author of the Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien being the author of The Lord of the Rings, would have been a joy to read, I am sure, regardless of the subject matter.
“What is exciting is that the manuscript includes some of Lewis’s best and most precise statements about the nature of language and meaning,” Beebe said. “Both Lewis and Tolkien wrote separately about language, communication, and meaning, but they published nothing collaboratively.”
Beebe found the fragment in a small notebook Lewis used. In the notebook were early fragments of The Magician’s Nephew and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, along with several unpublished thoughts and ideas. Beebe discovered the fragment after turning the notebook upside down and reading from back to front.
“I was so surprised to find Lewis writing about language and meaning, using examples and illustrations not found in any of his published work,” Beebe said. “I knew I had discovered something interesting. But at the time, I didn’t know I had found something important.”
Beebe determined it was the start of the lost book after several years of additional research into Tolkien and Lewis. In the manuscript, Lewis consistently refers to multiple authors instead of writing in the singular.
The Lewis estate must give its permission for the work to be published. However, Beebe is confident permission will be given and the manuscript will add new insight about Lewis’s ideas about the nature of language.
The article Beebe wrote documenting his discovery, “Language and Human Nature Manuscript Fragment Found: C. S. Lewis On Language and Meaning,” will be published next year in the journal Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review. The journal publishes scholarship that focuses on the work of seven prominent Twentieth Century British authors, including both Lewis and Tolkien.
This is very exciting, and I look forward to reading it someday. I hope whatever it is, finds a way into publication. In particular: the Narnia snippets. It’d be really interesting to read those and see what changed.
In addition, the Professor teaches a class on Lewis:
Beebe teaches a course about Lewis and communication called “C. S. Lewis: Chronicles of a Master Communicator,” both on the Texas State campus in San Marcos and in a special class that will be taught this July and August at Oxford University. When teaching the class in Oxford rather than meeting in a in a classroom, most sessions are taught at various sites throughout Oxford, including Lewis’s home, the Kilns; Magdalan College, the college where Lewis taught; as well as the room in the Eastgate Hotel where Lewis first met his wife, Joy Davidman. Their love story was the subject of the movie Shadowlands, in which Anthony Hopkins played Lewis and Debra Winger portrayed Joy.
“My goal in teaching the course in Oxford,” said Beebe, “is to bring Lewis to life and have students discover Lewis’ approach to communication. Discovering Lewis’ unpublished ideas about language and human nature adds depth to our discussion of his approach to communication,” said Beebe. (San Marcos Mercury)
Mark Sommer located the press release from Texas State. Pardon the duplicate material:
What if two of the most famous and widely read 20th Century authors who have each individually sold millions of copies of their books had written a book together?
C. S. Lewis, author of the Narnia Chronicles and Screwtape Letters, and J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, had planned in the 1940s to write a book together about Language. According to a letter written by Tolkien in 1944 to his son Christopher, the collaborative book was to be called Language and Human Nature. A news release from their publisher announced that the book was scheduled for publication in 1950. It was, however, never published. Scholars have thought, until now, that it was never started.
Steven Beebe, Regents’ Professor and Chair of the Texas State Department of Communication Studies, discovered the opening pages of the unpublished manuscript in the Oxford University Bodleian Library and has recently documented that the manuscript was the beginning of the previously believed to be unwritten Lewis and Tolkien book.
Although C. S. Lewis started the book, there is no evidence that Tolkien began work on the project.
“What is exciting” said Beebe, “is that the manuscript includes some of Lewis’s best and most precise statements about the nature of language and meaning. Both Lewis and Tolkien wrote separately about language, communication, and meaning, but they published nothing collaboratively.”
The article Beebe wrote documenting his discovery, “Language and Human Nature Manuscript Fragment Found: C. S. Lewis On Language and Meaning,” will be published next year in the Journal Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review. The journal Seven publishes scholarship that focuses on the work of seven prominent 20th Century British authors including both Lewis and Tolkien.
The partial book manuscript Beebe found was in a small notebook on which Lewis had written the word “Scraps.” Included in the tattered notebook are early fragments of two Narnia Chronicles, The Magician’s Nephew and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader along with unpublished ideas about a variety of topics.
Beebe discovered the book fragment by turning the little notebook upside down and reading from back to front.
“I was so surprised to find Lewis writing about language and meaning, using examples and illustrations not found in any of his published work,” said Beebe. “I knew I had discovered something interesting.But at the time, I didn’t know I had found something important.”
It was several years after finding the manuscript after doing additional research about Lewis and Tolkien that Beebe concluded that the manuscript was the beginning of the lost book.
In Lewis’s own distinctive handwriting the opening sentence clearly indicates that Lewis was writing a book about the nature and origins of language—the topic of the planned Lewis and Tolkien book. Further evidence that the manuscript is the beginning of the coauthored book project is the fact that Lewis wrote about “our statements” and used the phrase “authors consider,” rather than writing in the first person singular as Lewis often did. Because the newly discovered manuscript is copyrighted, it is not yet available for publication.Permission must be granted by the Lewis estate, and that process is in progress. When it is published, Beebe believes the manuscript will add new insights about Lewis’s ideas into the nature of language, with a special emphasis on the oral aspects of language, and about how meaning occurs when humans communicate.
Hmm, perhaps with the efforts of Christopher Tolkien he could unearth his father’s work for Language and Human Nature and we can finally have a Lewis/Tolkien collaboration!
Jonathon,
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Tolkien ever started working on this project. I don’t think he ever did. The letter from JRR to Christopher Tolkien mentioned in the article only mentions that Tolkien and Lewis had talked about it. The compilation by Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of JRR Tolkien, contains many letters to Christopher during the 1940’s, and the proposed book is never mentioned again by JRRT, either to Christopher or any other recipient.
While it would indeed be very exciting if any notes by Tolkien for such a book surfaced, it seems very unlikely. However, as late as 1948, Lewis mentioned the book to Chad Walsh, saying that it would be published in 1949, so perhaps Tolkien had written something by then. However, at this point, Tolkien was absorbed in finishing The Lord of the Rings and trying to get it published, so I doubt he got much, if anything done. Disagreements between the two authors about the subject was likely another hindrance.
Oh wow! That is soooooooo cool; I hope it’ll be published soon!
I just discovered the original source for this story. The official Press Release is on the Texas State website: http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2009/07/CSLewis070809.html
A quote not found in the San Marcos Mercury report:
“It was several years after finding the manuscript after doing additional research about Lewis and Tolkien that Beebe concluded that the manuscript was the beginning of the lost book.
In Lewis’s own distinctive handwriting the opening sentence clearly indicates that Lewis was writing a book about the nature and origins of language—the topic of the planned Lewis and Tolkien book. Further evidence that the manuscript is the beginning of the coauthored book project is the fact that Lewis wrote about
Awesome. That’s a great find. Very interesting, the language that he was using. Perhaps Tolkien did have some input into it.
My take on it, Paul, is that Professor Beebe came across Lewis’s thoughts for an Introduction to the book which Lewis wrote down very early after the authors’ first conversation about it in 1944. The articles talk about this draft being written up-side-down in the notebook, presumably in between the other writing in the book. Lewis was very concerned about conserving paper during the war, so an early date for this is logical. He would have assumed Tolkien would eventually be the co-author, but that does not mean that Tolkien actually had written anything yet.
I must repeat that during this time that Tolkien was very focused on finishing The Lord of the Rings and trying to get it published. There were also demands from his publisher for anything else he had written, and his time was also taken up with editing Farmer Giles of Ham. It would not surprise me at all if Tolkien never got around to putting anything on paper at all.
It was very exciting discovering this manuscript. It took several years before I figured out precisely what I had found. I knew that it was a Lewis manuscript about language and communication, but it took some time for me to figure out that Lewis had planned to write this book with J. R. R. T. The manuscript provides what I believe to be important new insights about C. S. Lewis’s ideas about communication, language and meaning.
Steven Beebe, Texas State University-San Marcos
Dr. (?) Beebe: Thank you for commenting on this! I am very excited about the prospect of eventually reading this work, however incomplete it may be. I’m sure that it’ll probably be something that absorbs you, and then leaves lingering thoughts without suitable conclusions.
I am also curious about the contents of the Narnia portions that you located, and how they relate to the final versions of the books as published. Will you be providing insight into that as well?
Walter Hooper has written extensively about the Narnia fragments that appear in the notebook that I read in his excellent book Past Watchful Dragons. What has not been written about is the fragment of the Lewis manuscript that I inadvertently discovered while spending time exploring Lewis manuscripts in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The existing drafts of the Narnia Chronicles that appear in Lewis’s handwriting in the same notebook in which I found the Lewis manuscript are different from the final drafts that are published. Lewis’s ideas about the Narnia story provide evidence of his creativity, as does the newly discovered manuscript that Lewis planned to eventually publish with Tolkien. He was a master communicator, I believe, who not only practiced effective communication in his written and oral communication, but had keen theoretical insights about human communication.
Steven Beebe, Texas State University-San Marcos