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LEWIS (CLIVE STAPLES) Series of four autograph letters signed ("C.S. Lewis") to student Anthony Spearing regarding his essays; with autograph notes and other material, [November 1959-1960]
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LEWIS (CLIVE STAPLES)
Footnotes
'HE'S A FOOL WITHOUT HIS BOOK... AND YOU CATCH ME WITHOUT MOST OF MINE': C.S. Lewis comments on a student's work with a reference from The Tempest, and encourages a long career in academia.
The recipient of these letters, Anthony Colin Spearing (b.1936) was awarded his fellowship at Queen's College in 1960 and embarked on a long career as a well-respected academic. He is the author of numerous books and papers on mediaeval English literature and a collection of essays in his honour was published in 2016. A manuscript copy of his Part II English Tripos essay entitled "The Translation of Old English Verse", written whilst a student at Jesus College in 1957, including annotations by Lewis in the margin, is also included in the lot. In a memoir of his time at Cambridge with C.S. Lewis as his supervisor he writes: '...On this first visit to Lewis I was in a state of nervous awe... I couldn't help being conscious of his scholarly eminence... a shortish, stout, balding, middle-aged, bespectacled, red-faced man, dressed, as he usually was, in a shabby tweed jacket and well-worn flannel trousers that didn't quite fit him... he loved Cambridge... because it reminded him of the unspoiled Oxford of his youth... what mattered greatly is that he did not simply dismiss my callow efforts, but treated them seriously and was willing to argue with me about them...'. They are not published in C.S. Lewis Collected Letters, ed. Walter Hooper, 2006.

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