C. S. Lewis: Writing and Publishing Literary Criticism with Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press

This essay uses unpublished archival material to explore what this reveals about the commissioning, gestation, editing, and publishing of several key works of literary criticism by C. S. Lewis: The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936), The Oxford History of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (1954), Studies in Words (1960), and The Discarded Image (1964). Using author marketing questionnaires, book cover designs, and correspondence between Lewis, press editors, bibliographers, and press reviewers, and cuttings from post-publication reviews, we analyse the complex labour structures, systems of patronage, levels of expertise, peer review processes, assessment of various potential reading markets, the practicalities of authorial revision and typesetting, and the intersection between pedagogical practice and publishing which these demonstrate. This case study makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role played by mid-twentieth century academic publishers to the production of knowledge in the English-speaking world.