C. S. Lewis

I e-mailed The Marion E. Wade Center and they sent me this link.

I've got a profile set up here.

Do they have more specific information on editions? Seems like that would be helpful.

This might also be of interest.

>2 jbd1:
I just got the response this afternoon, and didn't think to ask for more detailed info. Have you guys seen the PDF before? Perhaps I was being overly enthusiastic . . .

No, I hadn't seen it and I think it's a great find! (After all, he's one of the top 10 authors on LT, overall, and the second most popular dead author, after Tolkien.)

Agreed. This is a fantastic find.

I agree it's interesting, but surely there must be more information about the books, so that complete data - rather than just author/title - can be included.

Can we blog about this? Lewis "cracks the screen" in a way most or all other LTLLs do not?

T

Yes, but BOB81, can you just shoot them another email first and see about more detailed info? This is one of those cases where, if there is more specific data available, it makes more sense to pursue it and enter it on the first go rather than having to go back and redo things later.

And Tim, really, most or all others ... ? C'mon, that's just dirty pool :-) Where's the love!?

Editions would be good. Otherwise, people might as well divide the list into chunks and do manual entry.

>9 jbd1:
I immediately sent them a hysterical THANK YOU!!! reply, but I'm sure I could.

Yes, I agree with 11 - without editions, it will be easier to do manual entry than to search libraries and then take out all the incorrect edition info.

>10 jbd1:

Lewis is a giant. People like Hemingway. They love Lewis.

BOB81, since you've started him up - when you have a moment, please add an "About My Library" note (probably with link to the PDF) to the source of the library, a pic if you can find one, and edit the records added so far to remove the edition data, since we don't know any of it. Once those are set I'll Legacify him and do up a blog post. Are you taking volunteers?

Just to be clear, did you ask the Wade Center for permission to post this information, or did you just ask them for the information, itself? (The .pdf has a couple of strongly-worded warnings on it, so it sounds like they wouldn't be happy about unauthorized copies.)

Right.

Yes, thanks Katya, that too :-)

Here's the wording of the request.

Hi there! I'm just writing to ask, would it be possible for you to e-mail me a complete list of the books in your C.S. Lewis library collection, for use in the creation of a C.S. Lewis LibraryThing Legacy Library?

http://www.librarything.com/groups/iseedeadpeoplesbooks

http://www.librarything.com/profile/C.S._Lewis

Thanks!

Robert _

I don't know if I'll be doing any more with it tonight, but if anybody else wants in on it, tell me here and I'll PM you the password.

Sounds kosher to me. Once you have a chance to get the rest set, drop me a note. Thanks!

9, 12
I went ahead and sent that follow-up.

The next two are assuming we don't get the specific edition info:

>11 infiniteletters:, 13
The only problem I have with manual entry is that I think we might get a lot of unique works with this library (if the first 6 books are any indication), and if we do it manually, we'll lose the 'Subject' info we might otherwise have had on those unique works.

edit the records added so far to remove the edition data

My problem with this is that the dates can be somewhat useful for sorting: although a person can't necessarily see how old the content of a book is by the date, they can see how new the content isn't. Couldn't we just put a notation in the 'About my library' field, explaining that the dates and editions are not to be taken literally?

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to rock the boat; I'd just like to hear your thoughts on these things.

>21 BOB81:. My problem with this is that the dates can be somewhat useful for sorting:

In the future, we'll hopefully be able to sort by original publication date, which won't depend on the edition entered but will still give a publication cutoff date (if that makes any sense). So I agree with Jeremy, don't enter publication information that we're not certain of.

>The only problem I have with manual entry is that I think we might get a lot of unique works with this library (if the first 6 books are any indication), and if we do it manually, we'll lose the 'Subject' info we might otherwise have had on those unique works.

If that turns out to be the case then, yes, I agree that we should pull the data for those books from a library to get the subject / class number info (and then delete the edition-specific info).

So, are we doing it, or are we waiting to see if there's better info.

I vote "wait."

Me too. No real reason to get stuff in and then have to re-enter it. It's much easier to do once than twice (having done it both ways).

To the question in #21, I agree with Katya in #22, following our usual "no data is better than bad data" theory ... if incorrect data is in there - no matter how prominent a disclaimer is that the editions aren't exact - we'll get what I've named the "2pac problem" - observers/visitors/reporters seeing the library and noticing that the editions aren't correct, and dismissing the whole project because of that. That, we don't want.

But Tupac's library has been cleaned up, right?

It has. I went in and took out the bad-edition stuff after people noticed.

People will dismiss you no matter what. They're aching to. While it's good to do things the way you want to do them, you shouldn't do it based on what other people. Rather, cultivate the well-thrown "blow me." :)

Well, if we can easily avoid giving them good reasons to dismiss us, it only seems reasonable to do that.

Yeah, I hear you.

Well, it looks like we'll have to wait until Monday to get a response on that follow-up e-mail.

I was also wondering what I should put in the 'Location' field on the profile: should I enter his burial location in Oxford, or the physical location of his books in Wheaton, IL?

Monday is a holiday for some. (Hooray state of Oklahoma employees!)

Oops; might have to wait 'til Tuesday!

Location is most typically used for the place the subject is generally understood to be from. But, I would put a note in "About My Library" about the books' current location (and perhaps something about how they came to be there).

I got a response to my follow-up e-mail, and apparently this is the only list they have available right now.

So, I was wondering how we should divide this thing up: what if we "split" the PDF into 5 page segments (1-5, 6-10, 11-15), so that the volanteers can each claim a page range? When someone finishes with a page range, they can claim another. Does this sound workable?

Good idea. But allow smaller page-ranges.

So, are we neutering the records to avoid any edition-specific details?

So, are we neutering the records to avoid any edition-specific details?

Yup. 3 pages?

So no book will have a cover, right?

Can't we just add them as we find them and leave a note about edition? I think this removing of information is very unpleasant. With information you can at least find an edition somewhere. Without it, why don't we just put the titles and authors into a spreadsheet and upload them, without any library data going in? After all, we can't know if the subjects or Deweys or etc. are for the edition we have in mind.

Which is why somebody suggested manually entering by author/title.

Right, no books will have covers - unless it's the correct edition, there shouldn't be a cover.

A note about edition doesn't work. Maybe if you did it for every single record in Comments, but doing it in a blanket way just confuses people.

Older books often don't have covers anyway - we might not be losing all that much.

>After all, we can't know if the subjects or Deweys or etc. are for the edition we have in mind.

These shouldn't really vary by edition, except for years in LCC and maybe some subjects like "Large-print books," but I think these are both fairly trivial.

>38 timspalding:

Oh, I think I misunderstood what you were getting at. Yeah, manual entry should be fine for any book that's already on the site.

I dunno. I just think you're throwing the baby out with the bath water. Most books have one manifestation, but you'd never be able to establish that--proving a negative--so you'd have to just blow away everything for the sake of accuracy in ignorance.

I don't see why a note is impossible, like "The library was provided as X, Y, Z. As a result, correct editions were generally impossible to note. Where possible, we have provided plausible editions, but no edition can be considered correct until this is cross-checked against the books themselves."

Didn't Sowerby make guesses?

Heh. Yes, which is why Endrina and I are about to spend six months undoing her guesswork.

And, guesses are different from knowingly using incorrect data.

I think it's more accurate to leave things blank than to insert wrong information.

Ah crud. Was I supposed to leave the Deweys, etc. in there?

And I've already found one typo in the PDF.

Dewey/LCC #s don't much matter either way - edition and date are the key bits to remove (and then you've got to make sure the dates aren't still stuck in the Summary field)

But is leaving the Deweys, etc. desirable?

It doesn't hurt, but they're not key elements. I don't think anybody's looking to the Legacy collections for call number information

So Tim, should I forward the permission e-mail to Abby, for the LT files?

And Jeremy, I was thinking of starting another ISDPB thread in which volunteers can claim a page range. Can you think of a good number of pages, or should we let them choose any number they like?

>28 timspalding:, 39, 43
I've been using Library of Congress, Columbia (CLIO), Yale University, University of Chicago, British Library (powered by Talis), National Library of Scotland, Talis Union Catalog, University of Cambridge, Trinity College, Dublin and SUDOC as sources, and so far, I haven't had any trouble finding "plausible" editions. I think we could leave the edition info in, and just past something (like this) into the comments field of every book.

After all, making one paste would be faster and easier than making several cuts; but I'm glad to go either way.

Another thread is fine for volunteers, and I think I would separate it into chunks (maybe three pages, maybe five) and let people grab whatever they like.

And I think as long as you put the disclaimer into each record, and you're finding a plausible edition, the solution you propose in 51 will work. Neither that nor taking the bits out is optimal (ideally we'd be able to get the right data) but in a pinch, that will do.

>43 timspalding:

"I dunno. I just think you're throwing the baby out with the bath water. Most books have one manifestation, but you'd never be able to establish that--proving a negative--so you'd have to just blow away everything for the sake of accuracy in ignorance."

If I can only find one manifestation on WorldCat and the date range is right, I'm comfortable leaving the publication information in the record. However, I glanced over the first page and saw things like "Flatland" and "Dante's Purgatorio," so my sense was that the library wasn't likely to have many books with only one edition out there.

"I don't see why a note is impossible, like 'The library was provided as X, Y, Z. As a result, correct editions were generally impossible to note. Where possible, we have provided plausible editions, but no edition can be considered correct until this is cross-checked against the books themselves.'"

That sounds fine to me, in the above situations, especially since Lewis lived recently enough that many of the books published in his lifetime should still be found in libraries. However, it also sounds like a cumbersome extra step. Do you have an idea for how this would fit in the workflow?

>53 Katya0133:

"it also sounds like a cumbersome extra step."

This is really the part of this project that I get the most enjoyment from. The finished products are nice but the process of putting them together is the reason I keep doing them.

However, it also sounds like a cumbersome extra step. Do you have an idea for how this would fit in the workflow?

Do you mean that volunteers might not want to go to the trouble of finding plausible editions? I see your point there. As to pasting in all 2000 odd "may not be the right edition" comments, I'm willing to do that.

Also, if anyone who works on the library wants to write a lilting, first-person 'About me' for the profile, please feel free; I only used the Wikipedia entry because I didn't think I could do any better.

>54 xkyzero:, 55

Well, I'm coming from the perspective of assuming that edition information wouldn't be included unless we were reasonably certain that there was only one edition printed of that work. So, I'm saying it would be a cumbersome extra step to figure out if that was the case before downloading the record (i.e., by pre-searching in WorldCat or by some other method).

. . . I just might have a profile photo lined up . . .

>57 BOB81:
I've been talking to member jglassow about using this photo on the profile: jglassow e-mailed me the permission he recieved from George MacDonald Informational Web, and according to the the wording of the permission, I think it will be alright to post it.

Is there a photo of Lewis among his books? That would be ideal.

Here are a couple of nice pics; but I have no idea who owns the rights . . .

http://www.boomerinthepew.com/images/2008/12/18/cs_lewis_in_armchair.jpg

http://www.suvudu.com/suvudumedia/CS-Lewis%5B1%5D.jpg

To recap some stuff from the other thread - here are glitches I have found in the PDF for the tail end pages. Corrected in the library input.

- Wilson, John
Noctes Ambrosianas is actually
Noctes Ambrosianae

At least the first word of the title is distinct enough to flush it out of a search.

- Winny, James
Two copies of The Elizabethan voyages listed. Typo? Who knows...

- Wooley, Leonard
is actually
Woolley, Charles Leonard

- (W.E. Beck, dean) Worcester Cathedral
Having trouble finding this - I think perhaps the real title may be a bit longer. I will put it in manually as a last resort.

- (Greenslade, S.L., ed.)
Why he wound up down here is a question. Duplicate copy of The works of William Tindale further up the list, i believe.

- Wylie, Elizabeth
is actually
Wylie, Elinor (looks like a copy/paste from the next author in the PDF)

- Yates, Frances A.
Both her works have "Offprint" added to the title in the PDF.

- Yeats, William B.
The Land of Heats Desire
should be
The Land of Heart's Desire

- Yonge, Charlotte M.
Prolific 19th century novelist whom I had never heard of until now. Several of her works have subtitles not given in the PDF, but I think that that is somebody being concise in the PDF rather than a different edition issue.

I have tried to add private comments where I have seen that kind of mismatch between PDF title and title-as-found-in-a-library.

- Zoegga, Geir T.
is actually
Zoëga, Geir Tómasson
(Big surprise - accent marks and such aren't getting into the PDF anywhere in the author column that I can see.)

Some things I think are suspect in the other parts of the PDF -

Gautier, T. Emaux At Camees
This looks like it should be Théophile Gautier and Émaux et Camées. (I only looked at this one because at one point the sort order thought the last name began with T instead of the first name, so it wound up next to stuff I'd input.)

Marryat, Frederick: A dog fiend
Looks like a PDF typo to me. Marryat's sea stories feature Snarleyyow or the dog fiend (I kid you not) but not *a* dog fiend. (Looks at touchstone) classic of naval fiction that I hadn't heard of...

Marsh, R. A royal indiscretion
Correct as far as it goes in the PDF; the rest of his books (mysteries, mostly) are under Richard Marsh instead of R. Marsh, though.

Should all three "Antole France" books be by "Anatole France"? (Currently two are, one isn't.)

Back to the mysteries of asking "why did he have only one volume of The Once and Future King - and why *that* volume, anyway?" I expect the others will turn up on his recommendations list someplace now, since he has several other less famous works by Terence Hanbury White.

About 3 of Lewis' top 10 recommendations were for his own books, the last time I looked, if anybody is calibrating the Suggester...

R. Marsh

As far as I can tell, many, if not most of the first names represented as initials in the PDF were simply entered that way to save time or space; just librarianaziness, I guess. I've mostly just ignored it, and gone for the right work. And yes, there are beaucoup misspellings in the PDF.

>61 DisassemblyOfReason:.

"- Winny, James
Two copies of The Elizabethan voyages listed. Typo? Who knows..."

This one's correct.

The Elizabethan voyages : a selection taken from the literature of Elizabethan travel and discovery
by James Winny

You should be able to pull it from Oxford.

> 63

I got it all right - I was just remarking that I wasn't sure whether the duplication in the list was deliberate or not (i.e., typo or were there really 2 copies).

I take it we don't need to send the center back a list of any bugs we found in the PDF, then. (I've spent too long having to file bug reports, I suppose....)

I can now blame C.S. Lewis for getting me to check out some of TH White's non-Once and Future King books.

My compliments on the painstaking work involved in cataloging this library.

I find it intriguing that I lead the list of readers who share a single book with Mr Lewis. (I'm ignoring the library of angelrose, which, as we all know, is not a real library at all.)

Seems odd that the two of us never met.

Buen trabajo!

>64 DisassemblyOfReason:

Ah, got it!

Thanks, Ernie!

(BOB81)

Did someone have a problem with 'The Rights of Man' I'd already entered? I'm a bit perplexed by this.

> 68

Er. Sorry about that; that would have been me. I have been attempting to clean up some of the ones I entered (on the theory that *some* of them had subject data *somewhere* if they were as old as, e.g. The Complete Angler) and hit that one while hunting down some of the others, I think.

I'm a little disappointed that Jack's copy didn't have the old spelling . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izaak_Walton#The_Compleat_Angler

> 70

(Apologies if this shows up twice.)

Yes, I kept thinking it ought to be 'Compleat' too but I left it the other way. I like the -eat spelling.

Recently you've added the "Diaries of Lewis Carroll" by Lewis Carroll (otherwise under Charles L. Dodsen). Oddly neither page allows combining with the main Lewis Carroll page - who's last name, by the way, was Dodgson not Dodsen. Could / would you please re-enter that listing so it van be combined? - there are other users with this book you see. Thanks.

>72 Nicole_VanK:

Took care of that one. I just started going over the library this morning, looking for errors, but I won't really be able to get into that until all the page ranges are in.

I fully understand, but I thought it better to point it out right away (otherwise I might forget).

Anyway, thanks!

"Hemingway is no longer with us and therefore cannot beat me up"

(george saunders "the united states of huck")

It was not as helpful as you might think that the books attributed in the PDF to William R. Russell appear to have been written by William R. Rutland instead.

I just wanted to say that to *somebody*.

If anybody manages to find this apocryphal William R. Russell instead (no, not the books on Luther that somebody else on Librarything has; the book on Swinburne and the book of poems), please let me know where he was hiding all this time.

We now return to your regularly scheduled thread...

>76 DisassemblyOfReason:
I found quite a few references to those two books on WorldCat and LoC; also combined rutlandwilliamr with William Rutland Rutland.

*somebody*.

Sorry D! I'm still here! I've been going over and checking some of the ranges (on p. 32 now), but I'm not moving too quickly. Not having any books to enter must be something like crashing off of Speed, though I don't really know for sure.

> 77

I didn't mean that as criticism or anything; it's just that it took me an embarrassing amount of time to find out who William R. R. really was, and on the net nobody can hear you say ARRRRRRRG!

(And I didn't know the middle name or I would have used that instead of the initial.)

Problems from pages 4-6:

1. There are three which I could not find any record of on LT. Have ya'll been manually entering those?

2. Belloc, H. - The French Revolution (1927) - p.4 - No 1927 edition found on worldcat, 1926 is the closest, but I refrained from adding to ask here.

3. Botteghe, Oscure - Quaderno XVII - p.6 - There were no records broken down by Quaderno so I put in a general one. Is that better or should be manually enter?

4. Bowra, C.M. - Milton's "Samson Agonistes" - p.6 - from worldcat the correct title is Inspiration and Poetry.

5. Bibles - p.5 - I need someone with more expertise to help in this area as I don't know totally how to distinguish between the different sections/languages.

>79 janemarieprice:
I think I've tracked down two or three of the Bibles in the 'Add books' sources; I'll post another message tomorrow.

>79 janemarieprice:

1. There are three which I could not find any record of on LT. Have ya'll been manually entering those?

Usually, that means there's a misspelled name and/or title in the PDF. Try doing a Google search with both the title and the name. If that yields no hints of a typo, just enter it manually.

2. Belloc, H. - The French Revolution (1927) - p.4 - No 1927 edition found on worldcat, 1926 is the closest, but I refrained from adding to ask here.

Just add the 1926 ed. and modify the date to 1927.

3. Botteghe, Oscure - Quaderno XVII - p.6 - There were no records broken down by Quaderno so I put in a general one. Is that better or should be manually enter?

Just leave it for now, I might change it later.

4. Bowra, C.M. - Milton's "Samson Agonistes" - p.6 - from worldcat the correct title is Inspiration and Poetry.

This might be a pamphlet or mimeograph of the "Samson Agonistes" essay from Inspiration and Poetry (may be a temporary link): probably better to just manually enter it as found in the PDF.

5. Bibles - p.5 - I need someone with more expertise to help in this area as I don't know totally how to distinguish between the different sections/languages.

In 'Add books':

Search Library of Congress source for hexapla, scholz The simple one at the top should work.

Search Talis Union Catalog source for new translation of the bible, moffat Any of those three.

Search Library of Congress source for new testament in the original greek, westcott Starting with the third option down, there are several that fit the bill.

Search Library of Congress source for variorum teacher's edition, bible Lists editor as author (some from other sources don't), which is fine.

I'll look into the others a little later today.

Oh, and when you enter those, tag them Bible

>79 janemarieprice:
Search Library of Congress source for Charles Kingsley Williams

Here's another massive list of favourites from C.S. Lewis' library: http://www.infloox.com/person?id=119d05ad - it's got the usual suspects, as well as a few that I wouldn't have expected (Milton to Beatrix Potter) :)

>84 bookblogger:

How do they know what is favorite books / authors were?

To fill in the favorite authors on the C.S._Lewis profile page, I used From the Library of C.S. Lewis : Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey. The compilers accumulated the information for the book from Lewis's correspondence, literary criticism, annotations, and other writings.

Pending more complete bib. info, C.S._Lewis is done.

Good work all! This will be a popular one!

Wow. We need to blog that.

Tim

Very cool. Will get a post written (we have a whole bunch of done ones now!).

Congratulations on completing this project. I'm flattered to discover myself currently Lewis' top shared library (weighted).

Reading down this thread, I've noticed one possible correction I can offer to the catalogue:

#61 indicates difficulty tracking down this catalogue entry:
- (W.E. Beck, dean) Worcester Cathedral
and would seem to have ultimately settled for:
Valentine Noake, The cathedral church of Worcester, Worcester: Littlebury, 1951

This was a pricey (12s. 6d.) 96pp. hardback, carrying a foreward from Dean Beck, but with Noake's authoriship clearly indicated on the title page. What I think far more likely to be intended by Wheaton's bracketed author listing is the more anonymous paperback (1s. 6d., 77pp.) entitled "Worcester Cathedral" (subtitled "Its history : Its architecture : Its library : Its school"), with contributions (and revisions spanning several decades) by divers hands. The first revision to carry a preface from Dean Beck was the Eighth Edition of 1952, published by The British Publishing Company Limited, Gloucester.

>91 rwb24:
Does this look good?

First of all - congratulations to everyone who contributed to this entry.

Just wondering about the best way of interpreting this information in the context of CS Lewis's overall book/ reading habits?

It gives us a snapshot of the author's personal library at the time of his death, but, obviously, his reading would be much wider than this - as a professional scholar, he would have had access to major university and academic collections; like many of us, he would probably also have borrowed books from friends, got rid of old books and so on.

Precisely. If one could access borrowing records from the libraries he had access to (if they retained such) we could create a "collection" to reflect that, or comb his correspondence for references to borrowed books, then comb all the Inklings' correspondence for having lent books to Lewis........ it could take a lifetime. People have built PhDs on less.

With some Legacy Libraries, we can have a really good sense of completeness b/c of records kept, etc. In some, it's just that: a snapshot. Sometimes it's a very blurry snapshot like with many of the Libraries of Early America projects where we only have probate records that will say "Small parcel books, parcel small books, Bible."

I know everyone here is eager to make these more accurate, and more useful to users and we're always open to suggestions/ observations!

The easiest thing to add would be books he's known to have read—books he talks about in his letters, cites in his footnotes, etc. But that should be kept very much separate.

For instance, under AC Doyle's library I created a collection from his book Through the Magic Door where he sits and reminisces in his library about the books staring back at him from the shelf. That way physical copies with evidence of ownership and good provenance are separate from books where the physical copy is either lost to time or has not been cataloged in a publicly accessible collection. This is one small, simple example.

http://www.librarything.com/profile/ACDoyleLibrary

A member, smcwl, pointed out in the bug collectors group that Lewis' edition of Silas Marner was incorrectly added as a video recording, noticeable now due to the media feature.

Just browsing through the catalogue I noticed there were a couple of issues with lack of bibliographical data. It more than likely wasn't available at the time, but the full listing for the library is up on the Wade Center's OPAC, and easily searchable.

If there are no objections, I'd be happy to go through the listings and where necessary, add or clean up the data. It seems fitting as I'm already working on a LL for Tolkien on the information which is available so I'm already in that era. Though I haven't worked on this library before so I don't have the password.