re. the C. S. Lewis Correspondence Project
So, re-reading my most recent post after hitting send I realized I had another point I'd wanted to make. Hence this follow-on post.
I think this project has a good chance of success because it builds on a model the Wade Center used to good effect for years --certainly before I started going to the Wade (1983ff). They had photocopies of their Lewis letters in row after row of big binders. Inside each binder on the left hand was a photocopy of a page from a letter by CSL. Facing it on the right side was a typed transcription of the same page. When occasion offered --for example, a staff member or work-study student had some time free from other tasks-- she wd add another batch of transcriptions. This not only made the material more available (not everyone finds Lewis's handwriting easy to read without some practice) but protected the originals from wear and tear. And it was self-correcting, since later users of the material wd point out misreadings and typos.
I think something similar, aside from the technological advances, likely to serve as a model for this new project. Once the basic procedure is established, a huge project can become manageable, the work divided up among many hands. There's the added bonus that the work becomes useful right away, increasing that utility as long as the project continues.
The only potential pitfalls I wd be wary of are (1) that this will be a massive amount of work and (2) I hope they have a procedure in place whereby members of the Steering Committee can drop out and new members recruited if needed, to guard against the 'Dead Sea Scroll' effect.
In short: a great idea that looks promising, with an end product that wd be of great use to more than just Lewis scholars. Let's hope things go well.
--John R.
current reading: "Refuge of Insulted Saints", in HIGH SPIRITS: A COLLECTION OF GHOST STORIES by Robertson Davies
*the title of this post, by the way, comes from an Arlo Guthrie song
4 comments:
I remember those binders. They were very useful. I think they were not so much photocopies of the Wade's own material than of the material they had exchange arrangements with the Bodleian for. Some of it didn't need transcriptions because it was already in the form of typed transcripts (without, annoyingly, copies of the originals). I remember finding, in one of those binders, the transcript of CSL's original fan letter to CW, the one in which he invites CW to the Inklings, three years before any previously known reference to the group - and I was reading this years before anyone published this information.
This is rather the opposite of what the Bodleian used to do. They would take letters - these were the original letters, now - and mount them in binders by taping them down by the left edges to heavy paper sheets that had binder-hole punches in them. You read the verso of the letter by lifting it up by the right edge and flipping it over, hinged on the tape. The accumulation of greasy fingerprints on the upper right corners was dismaying.
I've been a letter writer since 1969, and began reading Lewis's letters around 1976. He is worthy of emulation in this regard as in others. The letters written before his professional duties and the burden of so much correspondence with strangers are models of the kind of letter I would like to get and to write, with talk about books, descriptions of walks, weather, and interesting household and workplace incidents, as well as expressions of wisdom. Of course much that I actually write, and get, is just emails of very transient interest, and there's a place for that too. But I wonder about people who grew up never writing letters -- let alone saving them. Will they come to think they have missed something? Meanwhile I like the idea of an Inklings readers archive project, should some place want to undertake it, with preservation of letters reflecting the rise of Inklings readers' epistolary conversation.
Dale Nelson
What did you mean by "Dead Sea scroll effect"? :) I'd rather not try to guess and there are several possibilities. :)
Paul W.
I posted a reply to your comment re. the Dead Sea Scroll effect but it seems to have been lost in the ether, so we'll have to save that discussion for another time.
--John R.
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