In the last post, I put forth the proposition that my analysis of C.S. Lewis’ “erudition” has five key parameters:
- How many books did Lewis read?
- What was the value of the information in the books Lewis read?
- How robust was Lewis’ comprehension of what he read?
- How flawless was Lewis’ ability to retain the information he read?
- What did Lewis accomplish with all that “literary learning”?
The topic for this post is the first of the five: “How many books did C.S. Lewis read?” That question cannot be answered with perfect accuracy any more than we could answer the same question about ourselves. Absent certainty, it is still a question for which we can formulate a reasonable conjecture.
There are two approaches that I have employed—first, a bottom-up analysis and second, a top-down projection. Both approaches are based upon insights drawn from books by C.S. Lewis or from writings about him by others. To that end, I forge ahead plugging in parameters on his reading practices, coupled with a few (hopefully) reasonable assumptions.
It is the “bottom-up” analysis that I address in this post. Here, I look at various phases of Lewis’ life and make “educated guesses” as to the number of books he read during each period.
Reading While at Little Lea
I begin with his childhood. In an earlier post, I established that his parent’s collection of books in Little Lea, the family home in Belfast, probably housed as many as 2,500 books, possibly more. Lewis’ own commentary (from Surprised by Joy) paints a picture of the entire house being filled with books, not just in the main rooms, but in the attic where Jacksie and Warnie spent so much of their time playing.
C.S. Lewis lived on and off at Little Lea from April 1905 until September 1914, more than nine years. This phase of life included two years at Wynyard School, followed by his brief stint at Campbell College, then two years at Cherbourg House, followed by a year at Malvern College.
Assuming young Lewis read at an average speed of 325 words per minute over the course of his childhood from age 7 to 16, and that he did this for 4 hours per day each of 300 days per year, then he probably read about 1,500 books during this phase of his life.
Reading While with Kirkpatrick
In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis described what he considered to be a perfect existence which he enjoyed during his three years with William T. Kirkpatrick. On a typical day (six days each week) he spent 5 hours in study in the morning, followed a leisurely walk, then another 2 hours in study before dinner, followed by dinner, and then another 3 hours in study during the evening. My assumption is that he spent 7 of those 10 hours reading, and 3 hours writing. I project that his rate of reading had by this time advanced to 500 words per minute.
Is that high rate possible? I found a reference to a three-week holiday in December 1916 that sheds light on Lewis’ ability to read profusely. The quote is from George Sayer’s biography Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis:
“So after a holiday at Little Lea [December 1916], during which he read Hawthorne (whom he much admired), Aeschylus, Arnold Bennett, Edward Fitzgerald, Robert Bridges, Newman’s Apologia, Catullus, Herrick, Apollonius, Maeterlinck, Sir Thomas More, Tennyson, Mangan, and several other writers, he returned toward the end of January to Kirkpatrick to prepare for the exam.”
Who does something like that?
This analysis suggests that Lewis likely read around 1,500 books (challenging ones at that) while under Kirkpatrick’s tutelage.
Reading as an Oxford Student
There are reports of Lewis and his friends at Oxford spending as many as 8 to 10 hours a day reading. That may at first seem high, but it might well be true when you consider that he spent his final year completing a degree in English Literature—thereby accomplishing in one year what normally would require two years.
I assume his rate of reading had at this time had increased to 600 words per minute. Moreover, that he was reading on average 6 hours per day over the four years. This suggests that he may have read as many as 2,000 books while a student at Oxford University.
Reading as an Oxford Tutor (and Later, as a Cambridge Professor)
This is where I ran into difficulties. I have found few quantifiable references upon which to base my assumptions. What we do know is this: C.S. Lewis’ was ardently committed to fully knowing the material for each teaching assignment that he undertook.
Lewis’ first experience as a tutor was a one-year assignment teaching philosophy at University College. One can only imagine how many books on philosophy he read in order to be teach with authority on a topic as broad and abstract as that.
Certainly, this same level of diligence very likely applied throughout his academic career–from his first work, The Allegory of Love, to A Preface to Paradise Lost, to An Experiment in Criticism through to his final work, The Discarded Image—and countless lectures in between.
Lewis also participated in reading clubs, including Tolkien’s Kolbitar for Norse, the Dante Society for Italian, and another group for Homeric Greek. Most demanding of all was his role as President of The Socratic Club. Each of these associations would have fostered significant reading requirements. And Lewis would have met them.
Then there are the thirty books and 200+ essays Lewis authored–each of which required research. For example, I would imagine that Lewis read every theodicy ever published in preparation for The Problem of Pain. Moreover, The Abolition of Man (at92 pages arguably the world’s most concise masterwork), would have been supported by voluminous reading on every toxic potion of philosophical fallacy.
Lastly, there is the research Lewis did to fulfill his commitment to Oxford University Press in the English Literature series. That warrants its own special analysis. Read on . . . this is unique stuff.
Reading for the Book English Literature in the Sixteenth Century
This book I own. It is a first edition which sits prominently displayed on my bookshelf next to eight other first editions . . . where it has seldom been touched, until the past week.
Years ago, I learned that Lewis read EVERY book published during the 16th century in doing his research for this book. That statement came from no less an authority than Lewis himself. It came in response to a question from Francis Warner on how he (Lewis) went about writing the OHEL volume. According to Warner:
“He replied that he tried to read every book in that century . . . Every time he read an author, he wrote himself an essay on the subject, dated it, and put it in a drawer for a year and a day. He would then take it out and mark it.”
Who does something like that?
There is a quote from Walter Hooper’s indispensable resource C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide that goes as follows:
“Still, as time went on, he spent every available minute in the Duke Humfrey’s Library of the Bodleian reading the entire works of about 200 authors.”
I wonder, how many books is that?
I found an entry in a 2007 article written by Professor Donald T. Williams (“C.S. Lewis as a Literary Historian”). The passage read:
“. . . when Charles Huttar was working in the Magdalen College library he saw the register of books Lewis had checked out during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. It appears that Lewis had “essentially checked out the entire sixteenth-century collection.”
Apparently, when a work was too obscure to be housed in his own personal collection, or the Magdalen Library, he turned to The Bodleian.
Dr. Alan Jacobs, in his well-researched book The Narnian noted the following:
“Lewis read every single sixteenth-century book in Duke Humfrey’s Library, the oldest part of Oxford’s great Bodleian Library.”
Impressive. Still, I wondered how many books is that? I contacted both Alan Jacobs and Donald Williams. Both were supportive, but neither knew the answer.
So, I resolved to do this “on my own steam”, as Lewis might say. To start, I inspected the Preface in the book. Nothing there. I turned next to the Bibliography at the back of the book for clues. That was not especially profitable. To start, it appears as if Lewis had turned to nearly 1,000 different resource books that offered commentary “about” English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. That is not to say that he read those books in their entirety, but it does point to the extraordinary breadth of his research.
That was followed by a list of 152 individual authors—presumably those for whom he read their entire output. Some listings (Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, and Thomas More, for example) ran several pages each. Sadly, I found these listings difficult to interpret.
As a final tactic I contacted The Bodleian Library directly. I am pleased to report the research staff were stellar in their support. Over the course of 3 days, I sent and received messages from not one but six different members of the Bodleian staff.
My question to them was this: How many books first published during the 16thcentury are housed within the Duke Humfrey’s Library?
Here is what they told me:
- There are 6,778 “pre-1600” books in the Duke Humfrey’s Library.
- There are 33 “pre-1500” books in the Duke Humfrey’s Library
- Subtracting #2 from #1, means there are 6,745 books in the Duke Humfrey’s Library that are from the 16thcentury.
By the way, the number 33 for “pre-1500” books seemed rather low to me. However, the staff at The Bodleian confirmed that 33 was indeed the correct number. Why so low I cannot say. Perhaps the older writings are primarily fragile manuscripts stored in a safer area?
It is interesting to note two “side-bar” observations expressed by the staff members. First, that it seems to them highly improbable that C.S. Lewis could have read all those books. Second, they reported that there have not been many books from the 16th century added to the Duke Humfrey’s Library since C.S. Lewis was teaching at Oxford.
As amazing as it seems, if Lewis really did read EVERY book from the 16th century (as he sought to do), or even just EVERY book from the 16th century housed in the Duke Humfrey’s Library (which several others report that he did) then C.S. Lewis read somewhere around 5,000 to 6,000 books for that OHEL commitment.
I ask you: Who does something like that?
Page 10 | Page 11 | Part 12
Erudition Series Index
