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Charles Williams

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Charles Walter Stansby Williams (September 20, 1886 – May 15, 1945), was a writer educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire and University College, London. Williams had one sister, Edith, born in 1889. Although he was awarded a scholarship, Williams was forced to leave University College in 1904 without taking a degree because his family lacked the financial resources to support him. In the same year he began work in a Methodist Bookroom. Williams was hired by Oxford University Press as a proofreading assistant in 1908 and continued to work there in various positions of increasing responsibility until his death in 1945. One of his greatest editorial achievements was the publication of the first major English-language edition of the works of Søren Kierkegaard.

Although chiefly remembered as a novelist, Williams also published works of literary criticism, theology, drama, history, biography, and a voluminous number of book reviews. Some of his best known novels are War in Heaven (1930), Descent into Hell (1937), and All Hallows' Eve (1945). T.S. Eliot, who wrote an introduction for the last of these, described Williams's novels as "supernatural thrillers" because they explore the sacramental intersection of the physical with the spiritual while also examining the ways in which power, even spiritual power, can corrupt as well as sanctify. All of Williams's fantasies, unlike those of his fellow Inklings C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, are set in the contemporary world. More recent writers of fantasy novels with contemporary settings, notably Tim Powers, cite Williams as a model and inspiration. W.H. Auden, one of Williams's greatest admirers, reportedly re-read Williams's extraordinary and highly unconventional history of the church, Descent of the Dove, (1939) every year. Williams's study of Dante entitled The Figure of Beatrice (1944) was very highly regarded at its time of publication and continues to be consulted by Dante scholars today. Williams, however, regarded his most important work to be his extremely dense and complex Arthurian poetry in two books, Taliessin through Logres (1938) and The Region of the Summer Stars (1944). Some of Williams's best essays were collected and published in Anne Ridler's Image of the City and Other Essays in 1958.

Williams gathered many followers and disciples during his lifetime. He was for a period a member of the Salvator Mundi Temple of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, an offshoot of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He met fellow Anglican Evelyn Underhill (who was also affiliated with the Golden Dawn) in 1937 and was later to write [the introduction] to her published Letters in 1943. Williams also formed what some regard to be strange master-disciple relationships with young women throughout his lifetime. The best known (though probably not the most significant) of these occurred in the early 1940s with Lois Lang Sims. Lang Sims, whom Williams referred to as Lalage, published a series of letters that Williams wrote to her during this period in a volume entitled Letters to Lalage (1989). Though Williams married his first sweetheart, Florence Conway, in 1917, he continually struggled to reconcile a lifelong (though probably unconsummated) love affair with Phyllis Jones (who joined the Oxford Universty Press in 1924 as librarian) with his Christian faith.

Although Williams attracted the attention and admiration of some of the most notable writers of his day, his greatest admirer was probably C.S. Lewis. Williams came to know Lewis after reading Lewis's recently published study The Allegory of Love; he was so impressed he jotted down a letter of congratulations and dropped it in the mail. Coincidentally, Lewis has just finished reading Williams's novel The Place of the Lion and had written a similar note of congratulations. The letters crossed in the mail and led to an enduring and fruitful friendship. When World War II broke out in 1939 Oxford University Press moved its offices from London to Oxford. Although Williams was reluctant to leave his beloved city, this move did allow him to regularly participate in Lewis's literary society known as The Inklings. In this setting Williams was able to read (and improve) his final published novel, All Hallows' Eve as well as hear J.R.R. Tolkien read some of his early drafts of The Lord of the Rings aloud to the group. In addition to meeting in Lewis's rooms at Oxford, they also regularly met at The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford (better known by its nickname "The Bird and Baby"). During this time Williams also offered lectures at Oxford on John Milton and received an honorary M.A. degree. Williams is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford.

Contents

Williams's Novels

Complete Works

Books About Williams

External links

 

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