Owen Barfield, Romanticism Come of Age

Owen Barfield, Romanticism Come of Age: A Biography

“Barfield towers above us all…the wisest and best of my unofficial teachers.” —C.S. Lewis

“We are well supplied with interesting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting. His ambition is to set us free from the prison we have made for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our limited and false habits of thought, our ‘common sense.’” —Saul Bellow

Owen Barfield—philosopher, author, poet, and critic—was a founding member of the Inklings, the private Oxford society that included the leading literary figures C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Lewis, who was greatly affected by Barfield during their long friendship, wrote of their many heated debates: “I think he changed me a good deal more than I him.”

Simon Blaxland-de Lange’s biography (the first to be published on Owen Barfield) was written with the active cooperation of Barfield himself who, before his death in 1997, gave numerous interviews to the author and shared many of his papers and manuscripts. The fruit of this collaboration is a book that penetrates deeply into the life and thought of one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. It studies two pf Barfield’s influences—the Romantic poet Coleridge and the philosopher Rudolf Steiner—and elaborates on his profound personal connection with C.S. Lewis.

This biography also features a sketch in his own words (based on interviews with the author), describing Barfield’s strong relationship with North America and his two professions as lawyer and writer.

This updated edition features important new material, including Owen Barfield’s own “Psychography” (1948) and four pages of color plates.

C O N T E N T S:

Foreword by Dr. Andrew Welburn
Preface
Introduction

PART ONE

1. Owen Barfield: A Biographical Sketch Based on His Own Words

PART TWO: ELUCIDATION AND RECOGNITION: THE LECTURER (1964–97)

2. Owen Barfield and America
3. Barfield and Coleridge
4. The Vancouver Lectures: Evolution of Consciousness
5. Positivism and Its Residues
6. The Effects of Idolatry
7. The Force of Imaginative Thinking
8. “Sir, I thank God for you . . .”

PART THREE: THE FORGING OF A KEY: THE MAN OF LETTERS (1919–64)

9. Owen Barfield and C. S. Lewis
10. Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner
11. English People
12. Language as a Key to the Past
13. Poetry, Drama, and Magic
14. Vision for a Future Social and Cultural Order
15. Bonds of Love and Friendship

CONCLUSION

Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author