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Charles Williams: The Third Inkling 1st Edition

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Grevel Lindop (Author)
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3.4 out of 5 stars 7 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0199284153
ISBN-10: 0199284156
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (December 29, 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0199284156
  • ISBN-13: 978-0199284153
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 1.8 x 6.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #537,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starshe finally takes center stage with his better known Inkling colleagues
By Mark Newbold on November 27, 2015
Format: Hardcover
Having waited several years for this authorized biography on Williams to appear, it exceeds every expectation. Williams the most enigmatic and lesser known of that informal Oxford fellowship known as the Inklings, he finally takes center stage with his better known Inkling colleagues, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Williams shared a Christian world view with his fellow Anglican, Lewis and Tolkien who was Catholic on a essential level, but took theology to new and unexplored heights and depths. In many ways Williams shared more with fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield (1898-1997), Anthoposophist and student of the Austrian philosopher, Rudolf Steiner departing from the Christian orthodoxy of Lewis and Tolkien.

Never breaking from the Anglican fold, Williams joined the restructured Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn under the directorship of his friend, A.E. Waite. Lindop alludes to the possibility of his membership in the Stella Matutina which formed after the dissolution of the original HOGD, founded by W. Wynn Westcott and MacGregor Mathers. So many great literary and artistic minds were groomed by the mythopoeic, esoteric symbolism taught by the HOGD, Yeats, Brodie-Innes, Crowley, Maude Gonne, among others. This esoteric background freed Williams to explore the depths of implication in the Christian mysteries. This is self evident in his series of supernatural novels, for which he is best known. Though at times stylistically dense, the breathtaking exploration of ideas is challenging and innovative for the reader.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsAt last, a serious biography of this overlooked Inkling
By Sørina Higgins on December 20, 2015
Format: Hardcover
Here is my review over on my Charles Williams blog, "The Oddest Inkling": https://theoddestinkling.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/mini-review-of-the-third-inkling/. I'll copy it here for your convenience.

The official biography of Charles Williams, Charles Williams: The Third Inkling, written by Grevel Lindop and published by Oxford University Press, is scheduled to be released tomorrow! I have had an advance copy for a few days now, and let me tell you: It has been worth the wait, and you will not be disappointed! I am awash in happiness as I read this book: it’s big, thick, thoughtful, and rewarding. It is top-notch scholarship written in a beautiful style. There are quite a few surprises about CW (pleasant and otherwise!), and layers and layers of rich detail. It is hard to review the biography itself without slipping into a review of CW’s character–so I will try to do the one first and the other second. This is only a mini-review, as I have not finished reading the book (I’ve only had it for 5 days and spent 1 of those on the road and another in the ER!) and plan to reread it carefully, making notes, etc., so I will review it again more thoroughly later. I also plan to write reviews focusing on various aspects for Books & Culture and for Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal.

So, then: let me review the quality of Grevel Lindop’s research and writing in this book. I think it’s perfect. That’s saying a lot from critical old me. I have a hard time with weird prose styles, and lots of biographies are written in a strange, disconnected manner, with unrelated facts crammed into the same sentence. This is not. Grevel’s prose style is lovely! It’s smooth, precise, intelligent, and aesthetically pleasing. This is probably the result of his many years as a practicing poet.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsRevelations of Charles Williams
By Aquila on February 2, 2016
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Like many others, I waited eagerly for this biography of Charles Williams, and am impressed with the scope and depth of Lindop's research and his ability to organize the material into coherent form. Williams comes across as a three-dimensional character in all his complexity. The book is full of bombshells: the complexity of Williams's emotional life, his serious involvement with magic, his political liberalism, and it gives a better idea of Williams's career and importance as an editor for OUP than we have had before. Fault's? The title, for a start. It must have been the publisher's idea, since relatively little is made of Williams as an Inkling. Indeed, Lindop shortchanges the novels in favor of the poetry. Having read Alaister McGrath's biography of Lewis, I can see why Lewis and Williams became such firm friends. Lewis too was much more complex and troubled in his emotional life than he appeared to outsiders, something he could never reveal to Tolkien. But Lindop makes nothing of this, although I suspect there is much to be made. One great failing in the book is Lindop's relative ignorance of Anglo-Catholicism, which leads him to misunderstand certain aspects of Williams. But no biography is perfect, and Lindop has provided a rich and varied portrait that will considerably advance future Williams scholarship.
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4.0 out of 5 starsAn important and intriguing biography
By Spencer on February 17, 2016
Format: Kindle Edition
Charles Williams stands in literary history among the group of men called the Inklings. Most famously, that group includes J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Often Owen Barfield is mentioned along with them, too. Williams gets discussed but often on the fringes—a much less known person than Lewis or Tolkien. He remains known, in part, because of his association with the other two.

Whereas there are many biographies (authorized and otherwise) on Lewis and Tolkien, there have been few on Williams. Recently Oxford University Press has published a lengthy biography on Williams by poet and literary critic, Grevel Lindop.

It is appropriate that OUP publish this biography of the third Inkling because Williams’ biography is as much the history of OUP as it is the story of his own life. He worked for many years as an editor at Amen House, the London office of the Oxford University Press. During World War II, he worked for OUP in Oxford proper.

For the student of English literature, particularly of modern British literature, Williams’ life and work is interesting because of his interactions with the intelligentsia of that era. He corresponded in detail with Dorothy L. Sayers. He was friends with T.S. Eliot. He interacted with Dylan Thomas and Gerard Manly Hopkins and others. Some of these, even more than Tolkien and Lewis, are names that haunt the syllabi in colleges to this day. Williams helped shape the literary history of the English language due to his significant position as an editor of volumes, curator of anthologies, and author of prefaces and introductions. Lindop chronicles the work of Williams quite adeptly along those lines.

Williams was also a creator of literature. He wrote poetry, plays, and novels. Some of them are still in print today.Read more ›
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