The Published Work of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
The list below is not exhaustive, but is intended to give the range and depth of the books Tolkien and Lewis published, both during their lifetime and posthumously. As a glance through the titles shows, both men wrote on a range of subjects: Tolkien wrote medieval literature, the English language, philology, poetry, children's stories and fairy tales, as well as his famous fantasy novels; in addition to his Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis wrote science fiction (which he called "scientifiction"), literary criticism, literary history, poetry, novels, allegories, Christian apologetics, sermons, and autobiography, and was also a prolific essayist on a range of topics and perhaps one of the last great writers of letters.
The list is arranged chronologically by date of initial publication. While this order does capture how their work unfolded to the public, it is a poor index of their internal creative lives. The Silmarillion, for instance, published posthumously in 1977, captures one version of material Tolkien had been working on since at least 1916; likewise, though the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings were published in quick succession in 1954-55, Tolkien had in fact been working on them since about 1938 and had more or less completed the draft of the book by about 1949. Lewis's creative process also does not match up ideally with the published chronology. His masterpiece of literary criticism, The Allegory of Love, took him several years to write, while his first published prose work, The Pilgrim's Regress, he dashed together in a couple of weeks while on vacation in Ireland. The Chronicles of Narnia were published one a year from 1950 to 1956, but Lewis had in fact written most of them between 1949 and 1951. His final novel, Till We Have Faces, represents his crystallization of an idea that he had been kicking around for decades.
As this list shows, much of both Tolkien's and Lewis's work has been published posthumously. Tolkien's literary executor, his son Christopher Tolkien (1924-2020), edited most of his father's posthumous writings, which consist in the main of unfinished tales of Middle-earth, or abandoned drafts of some of his previously published material. It also includes in some cases "treatises" his father wrote about various aspects of Middle-earth — its flora and fauna, elvish languages, lore concerning the Five Wizards, theological speculations about the souls of humans, elves, and orcs, etc. Lewis's literary executor, Walter Hooper (1931-2020), has likewise devoted the last five decades since Lewis's death gathering, cataloging, and publishing the totality of Lewis's writing, including the three volumes (over five thousand pages!) of Lewis's personal letters.
Throughout their lifetimes, Tolkien and Lewis tended to publish with the same publishing houses. For J. R. R. Tolkien, this was Allen & Unwin for the U. K. — the publisher that first took a risk on The Hobbit in 1937 — and Houghton Mifflin in the United States. C. S. Lewis published most regularly with Geoffrey Bles Ltd. in the U.K. and with Harper Collins in the U.S.; his academic writings tended to be published by Cambridge University Press. The works of both writers have now also been translated into multiple world languages.
Books Published by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
(books read in this course are in boldface)
Books Published Posthumously (selected)
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