Lewis wasn’t the sort who would go back on a promise made to a fallen friend. One of the Human Characters Was Probably Based on a Woman Lewis Lived With. Refusing payment, he insisted that a fund dedicated to the widows of Church of England clergymen receive this money instead. The Guardian offered Lewis two pounds per letter.

The Newspaper Proceeds Helped a Charitable Cause. Readers devoured them en masse, and before long, publisher Geoffrey Bles converted Lewis’ series into a book. Every week, another hellish correspondence would appear, until the last one hit the stands on November 28. Having already submitted material to a now-defunct Anglican gazette called The Guardian, Lewis was in good standing with its editor, who released the first “Screwtape Letter” on May 2, 1941. Originally, These Dispatches Ran as a Serial. Inspired, the author worked at breakneck speed, frequently knocking out an entire letter in one sit-down session. In July 1940, Lewis came up with the idea of a senior demon named Screwtape mailing trade secrets and frank pointers to his greenhorn nephew, Wormwood, who has been charged with corrupting a human soul. It Took Lewis A Little Over Six Months to Write All 31 Letters. Here are 12 little-known facts about The Screwtape Letters, its development, and its enduring impact. Lewis’s most popular non-Narnia novel is a delicious, perceptive treatise on the weaknesses of human nature. Mere advice would be no good every sentence would have to smell of Heaven.' (Pp. But who could supply the deficiency? Even if a man-and he would have to be a far better man than I-could scale the spiritual heights required, what ‗answerable style‘ could he use? For the style would really be part of the content. Without this the picture of human life is lopsided. Ideally, Screwtape‘s advice to Wormwood should have been balanced by archangelical advice to the patient‘s guardian angel. 'I had, moreover, a sort of grudge against my book for not being a different book which no one could write. Lewis gave up on the idea realizing that it is easy to get into the mind of the diabolical and impossible to get into the mind of the angelic (note the ―Preface to the 2nd edition, Pp. Lewis planned to write a sequel featuring one angel encouraging a junior angel on how to be a good guardian angel.

The concept for the book is one devil, Screwtape, writing to his nephew, training him how to be successful as a tempter. One can‘t help but wonder what that sermon was about on that particular Sunday morning. Lewis came up with the idea for The Screwtape Letters as he was leaving his church (Holy Trinity, Headington) after a Sunday service. The Screwtape Letters: Background IntroductionĬ.S.

The screwtape letters book