"Everyone thinks that. They are quite wrong."

[nwhyte]

C.S. Lewis: "The starting point of the second novel, Perelandra, was my mental picture of the floating islands. The whole of the rest of my labours in a sense consisted of building up a world in which floating islands could exist. And then of course the story about an averted fall developed. This is because, as you know, having got your people to

Comments

[gareth_rees]

I believe this. Pretty much all Lewis's writing has a strong didactic element, so there was no need for him to start from the moral: it was sure to enter the work soon enough.

[nwhyte]

To lighten the tone (?), Lewis ends the conversation with a story about "the Bishop of Exeter, who was giving the prizes at a girls' school. They did a performance of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', and the poor man stood up afterwards and made a speech and said, 'I was very interested in your delightful performance, and among other things I was very interested in seeing for the first time in my life a female Bottom.'"

[ooxc]

It's also in a collection of CSL's shorter works - Christian Reflections, I think it's called - but I don't know if it's still in print - I bought it in the 1960s

[gareth_rees]

"Unreal Estates" has been reprinted in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (Mariner Books, 2002), On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature (Harvest Books, 2002) and in C. S. Lewis Remembered (Zondervan, 2006). Much of it is readable on Google Books.