Issue 113 Seven Literary Sages

What's inside

Friends, warriors, sages

How seven writers gave us stories that endure, imparting truths that never fade

the editors with Alister McGrath, Chrystal Downing, Colin Duriez

The storyteller

The stories of George MacDonald (1824-1905) showed goodness and holiness to Lewis and Chesterton—and show those same things to us

Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson

Learning what no one meant to teach

The educational experiences of C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Michael Ward

A Christian revolutionary?

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) proclaimed Christ as Lord over areas from theater to economics

Suzanne Bray

The forgotten Inkling

Owen Barfield (1898-1997) insisted on the imagination as a road to truth. It profoundly changed his friends—and through them, us

Edwin Woodruff Tait

Did you know?

MacDonald’s players, Tolkien’s grave, Chesterton’s pajamas, and Lewis’s hat

the editors

Editor's note: Seven literary sages

How much did C.S. Lewis and his friends and mentors change the society around them?

Jennifer Woodruff Tait

Sermons in stone: Lewis comes to Poets’ Corner

Honoring a writer and scholar

Michael Ward

What C. S. Lewis learned from his “master”

Lewis’s recommendation to seekers: read George MacDonald

Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson

Bread of the earth and bread of heaven

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) wanted a new kind of Christian economics

Ralph C. Wood

Sayers “begins here” with a vision for social and intellectual change

Sayers was asked to compose a wartime message

Crystal Downing

Why hobbits eat local

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) and his friend Lewis shared an ideal of remaining rooted on the land of God’s good creation

Matthew Dickerson

Meeting Professor Tolkien

He laughed at the idea of being a classical author while still alive

Clyde S. Kilby

Christian History timeline: Biographies of the seven sages

Brief biographies of our featured authors

Matt Forster

The Inklings

Four of the seven sages belonged to a group of famous friends

Colin Duriez

So great a cloud of witnesses

Some connections and influences among the seven sages

By Jennifer Woodruff Tait and Marjorie Lamp Mead

Dorothy L. Sayers’s surprising legacy

Sayers's widely-used educational model

Matt Forster

Transcending ourselves

C. S. Lewis on learning

David C. Downing

“We still make by the law in which we were made”

Tolkien and “subcreation” — the making of a secondary, fictional world

Colin Duriez

The poetic vision of a connected world

The difficult works of Charles Williams (1886-1945) tell of self-giving love and mystical union

Brian Horne

Was the oddest Inkling the key Inkling?

It was often Williams's agitated intellect, fertile imagination, and physical energy that moved things along

Thomas Howard

Seven sages: recommended resources

With seven influential authors and scores of books by and about them, where should one begin? Here are suggestions compiled by our editors, contributors, and the Wade Center

the editors
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