The previous collection was by Williams’s friend, Anne Ridler, The Image of the City and Other Essays (London: OUP, 1958). His book is described on the website of his Press as “The first collection of Williams’s literary essays for over fifty years”. And his fine, deft 16-page introduction is so engaging you may not at first consciously reflect on the depths of its thought and erudition. And Stephen Barber’s enjoyable and rewarding new selection offers the reader – whether unacquainted, familiar, or assiduous collector – something more deliberate and weighty than just ‘anything by Williams’, however attractive even that might have been. I have gone on agreeing, during the decades of reading him that followed. Humphrey Carpenter, author of The Inklings (1978), once told me something to the effect that he thought anything published by Charles Williams would be worth reading – I think in the context of all his book reviews and other short prose works. Stephen Barber, ed., The Celian Moment and Other Essays by Charles Williams (Carterton, Oxon.: The Greystones Press Ltd, 2017) : paperback 12.99 pounds sterling.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |