Beyond Narnia

A Practical Guide to His Essays for Every Curiosity

“The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.”
—C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

It is no secret that C.S. Lewis wrote a lot. What is more remarkable is the range of his work: children’s stories and scholarly treatises, science fiction and sermons, literary criticism and satire. He is a household name. And yet, for all this visibility, his essays are often the least explored.

There is historical precedent for this. Walter Hooper played a pivotal role in bringing readers the collections of essays we have today. Hooper came into Lewis’s life late, serving briefly as his secretary in 1963, just months before Lewis’s death. After Lewis passed away, however, Hooper became one of the primary stewards of his literary legacy. At the time, Lewis’s essays were scattered across journals, magazines, radio talks, and unpublished manuscripts. Few readers—and not even Lewis himself—had a clear sense of how extensive this body of work really was.

Hooper took on the painstaking task of locating, collecting, editing, and organizing these materials. He compiled major posthumous collections such as God in the Dock, Christian Reflections, Of This and Other Worlds, and They Asked for a Paper, among others. In doing so, he brought Lewis’s occasional pieces out of obscurity into coherent volumes that could be read by general audiences. Without Hooper’s editorial work, many of Lewis’s most incisive writings would likely have remained inaccessible or lost altogether.

Hooper did more than preserve Lewis’s work; he shaped how it has been received. By grouping essays thematically and adding historical context, he presented Lewis as one of the twentieth century’s great essayists.

Survival, however, has not guaranteed attention. While Lewis’s novels and popular apologetic works have entered the cultural mainstream, the essays still live in a quiet corner. The fact that they are less read than Lewis’s stories reflects their enduring challenge: essays require patience, close reading, and reflection. The good news is that there is something in his essays for nearly everyone. Here’s a guide to getting started, organized around the questions and curiosities you might bring to them.

(Essay collections are noted in parentheses next to the title of each essay.)

---

If You’re Curious About Faith

• “The Weight of Glory” (God in the Dock)

• “Christian Reflections” (Christian Reflections)

• “Is Theology Poetry?” (God in the Dock)

• “An Obstinacy in Belief” (The World’s Last Night)

• “Christian Apologetics” (God in the Dock)

If You Want Clear Thinking

• “Bulverism” (God in the Dock)

• “Meditation in a Toolshed” (God in the Dock)

• “The Poison of Subjectivism” (God in the Dock)

• “Miracles” (God in the Dock)

If You Want Something Applicable to Human Nature

• “Learning in Wartime” (God in the Dock)

• “On Living in an Atomic Age” (God in the Dock)

If You Love Literature and Storytelling

• “On Stories” (On Stories)

• “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said” (On Stories)

• “The World’s Last Night” (The World’s Last Night)

• “Myth Became Fact” (God in the Dock)

If You Want Wit and Satire

• “Xmas and Christmas” (God in the Dock)

• “Delinquents in the Snow” (God in the Dock)

• “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” (The World’s Last Night)

• “We Have No Right to Happiness” (God in the Dock)

• “Cross Examination” (God in the Dock)

Perhaps Lewis was right that most people “want to hear the stories",” but for those who do pick up the essays, they offer a different kind of reward: insight, clarity, and humor. In the end reading the essays is less about keeping up with a famous author and more about entering a conversation that is intellectually generous, challenging, and truthful.