This Day in C.S. Lewis History is now on the air! Thanks for checking out this first installment.
As we continue exploring Jack’s books and essays, I will occasionally provide some historical context about Jack’s life in brief 3-min audio clips. Please bear with me as I navigate sound engineering and all the nuances of audio recording.
Our first event takes place in France during the final year of World War I. On February 26, 1918 Jack’s brother, Warnie, learns about Jack’s hospitalization in Le Treport for trench fever. As we know and can reasonably assume, Jack thankfully recovered from trench fever and went on to survive the war. If he had not, the world would never have received Jack’s masterpiece imaginative supposal about denizens of Hell who take a bus ride to Heaven.
MacMillian published the American Edition of The Great Divorce 28 years later on February 26, 1946. The chapters of this book had previously been serialized in The Guardian.
Check out the audio for more details surrounding these two events.
And a big thanks to Dr. Joel Heck for his masterpiece, Chronologically Lewis (https://joelheck.com/chronologically-lewis/). I sourced most of the details from his work and also consulted these other resources:
This Day in C.S. Lewis History: February 26