Charles Williams: The Third Inkling

by Grevel Lindop

Overview

This is the first full biography of Charles Williams (1886-1945), an extraordinary and controversial figure who was a central member of the Inklings--the group of Oxford writers that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Charles Williams--novelist, poet, theologian, magician and guru--was the strangest, most multi-talented, and most controversial member of the group. He was a pioneering fantasy writer, who still has a cult following. C.S. Lewis thought his poems on King Arthur and the Holy Grail were among the best poetry of the twentieth century for 'the soaring and gorgeous novelty of their technique, and their profound wisdom'. But Williams was full of contradictions. An influential theologian, Williams was also deeply involved in the occult, experimenting extensively with magic, practising erotically-tinged rituals, and acquiring a following of devoted disciples. Membership of the Inklings, whom he joined at the outbreak of the Second World War, was only the final phase in a remarkable career. From a poor background in working-class London, Charles Williams rose to become an influential publisher, a successful dramatist, and an innovative literary critic. His friends and admirers included T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and the young Philip Larkin. A charismatic personality, he held left-wing political views, and believed that the Christian churches had dangerously undervalued sexuality. To redress the balance, he developed a 'Romantic Theology', aiming at an approach to God through sexual love. He became the most admired lecturer in wartime Oxford, influencing a generation of young writers before dying suddenly at the height of his powers. This biography draws on a wealth of documents, letters and private papers, many never before opened to researchers, and on more than twenty interviews with people who knew Williams. It vividly recreates the bizarre and dramatic life of this strange, uneasy genius, of whom Eliot wrote, 'For him there was no frontier between the material and the spiritual world.'

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191063121
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	10/29/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	389,717
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Grevel Lindop was formerly Professor of Romantic and Early Victorian Studies at the University of Manchester. His previous books include The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey; A Literary Guide to the Lake District; Travels on the Dance Floor, which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week; and a twenty-one volume edition of The Works of Thomas De Quincey. He has published six collections of poems, and his Selected Poems appeared in 2000. He lives in Manchester, where he now works as a freelance writer

Table of Contents

Introduction
Prologue
Chapter One: From Holloway to Silvania
Chapter Two: 'The Most Talkative Uoung Man'
Chapter Three: The Silver Stair
Chapter Four: 'Marriages are made in Heaven'
Chapter Five: The Initiate
Chapter Six: 'The Satanist'
Chapter Seven: 'Why the Devil does anyone ever get married?'
Chapter Eight: Romantic Theology
Chapter Nine: Phyllis
Chapter Ten: 'I can't do without you - I can't'
Chapter Eleven: Substitution
Chapter Twelve: Novels and the Poetic Mind
Chapter Thirteen: 'They Saved My Life by Three Hours'
Chgapter Fourteen: 'I'm Becoming a Myth to Myself'
Chapter Fifteen: 'The Staff Work of the Omnipotence'
Chapter Sixteen: The Order of the Co-Inherence
Chapter Seventeen: 'A Kind of Parody of London'
Chapter Eighteen: 'Bitter Is the Brew of Exchange'
Chapter Nineteen: A Pioneer for the Young Poets
Chapter Twenty: 'It Is Not Yet Too Late'
Chapter Twenty-One: 'Into the Province of Death'
Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

"In Charles Williams: The Third Inkling, Grevel Lindop has written a page-turner. He proves himself a master of the biographical narrative. He knows how to end chapters and sections of chapters with cliffhangers. He liberally employs the ironic slant, and he has an eye for visuals. Lindop's preface, a model of balanced prose, sets the volume's tone." —Philip Irving Mitchell, Religion and the Arts

"I stand in awe of the achievement this book represents. I cannot thank Grevel Lindop enough for accepting the challenge of writing The Third Inkling and tracing, insofar as possible, the life of this admittedly strange and incontestably gifted man. Lindop has written what will surely stand as the biography of record of Charles Walter Stansby Williams." —Rev. Nancy E. Topolewski, VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center

From the Publisher