This Ever Diverse Pair

This Ever Diverse Pair

“For if it is the Burdens of this world who keep traditions alive, it is the Burgeons who create them. The Burdens cannot make anything; they can only collect and preserve.” (This Ever Diverse Pair 114-115) – An autobiographical novel written to help avert a nervous breakdown (as Barfield explains in Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning)

This Ever Diverse Pair was first published in 1950, when Barfield was practicing as a solicitor in London. A humorous portrayal of everyday life in a lawyer’s office, the novel’s true subject is what C.S. Lewis described as “the rift in every life between the human person and his public persona – between, say, the man and the bus conductor or the man and the king…” Owen Barfield is one of the twentieth century’s most significant writers and philosophers. Widely renowned for his insight and literary artistry, Barfield addresses key concerns of the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and arts in our time. His fellow Inklings, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, are among the leading figures influenced by Barfield’s work.

“A work of art and more original than anything I have read for a long time” – C.S. Lewis

About the Author

Owen Barfield (1898–1997), the British philosopher and critic, has been called the “First and Last Inkling,” because of his influence and enduring role in the group known as the Oxford Inklings. The Inklings included C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. It was Barfield who first advanced the ideas about language, myth, and belief that became identified with the thinking and art of the Inklings. He is the author of numerous books, including Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning; Romanticism Comes of Age; Unancestoral Voice; History in English Words; and Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s. His history of the evolution of human consciousness, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, achieved a place in the list of the “100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century.”