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Lot 168

LEWIS (C.S.)
Autograph verses signed ("C.S.L."), headed "Interim Report", comprising a Spenserian stanza of nine lines [June 1952]

27 November 2018, 13:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

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LEWIS (C.S.)

Autograph verses signed ("C.S.L."), headed "Interim Report", comprising a Spenserian stanza of nine lines opening: "I merveill much such critiques doe complaine/ Of bookes with scisers and with past compyld" in which he wonders why books put together by this method should be deemed easier work than those of "free invention"; citing as example himself, with "fingers all defyled/ With slimie Stickphast fowle and feculent" to such a degree that he deems "Don Spenser self an easier journei went", 1 page, time-stained, folded at centre and edges, minor wear at edges, mounted in frame with photographic portrait, oblong 8vo, [June 1952]

Footnotes

'BOOKES WITH SCISERS AND WITH PAST COMPYLD' – C.S. Lewis complains of the hack-author's life. This Spenserian squib dates from the period when Lewis had transferred from Oxford to Cambridge, occasioning his essay 'Interim Report' in which the two universities are compared (published in The Cambridge Review, Vol. LXXVI, 21 April 1956, pp.468-71; and reprinted posthumously in Present Concerns). The poem is included in The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis, edited by Don King, 2015.

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