C.S Lewis's lost work finds its way out of the bonfire

C.S. Lewis. Photo / Supplied

The author C.S. Lewis loved reading his translation of Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid to fellow Oxford-based writers, including J.R.R. Tolkien, at the Inklings, the famous informal literary discussion group they frequented.

The translation was believed to have been lost in a bonfire in 1964, a year after the author's death. Now, nearly 50 years later, it has resurfaced. The work was apparently rescued by Lewis's former secretary, Walter Hopper, 79. The complete translation is to be published in the book C.S. Lewis's Lost Aeneid, which is out next month.

"Although it had been known that Lewis had worked on this translation, no one realised that portions still survived until Walter began sifting through his material," said the book's editor, Andy Reyes. "The bonfire, it was assumed, had consumed the most significant fragments of Lewisiana."

Lewis first started work on the translation in 1935, when he was 37, and it is believed he returned to it several times throughout his life.

Another fragment of Lewis's writing which was published after being thought lost was his abandoned novel The Dark Tower. In the book's introduction, Hopper describes how Lewis's brother, Major Warren Lewis, began clearing out The Kilns, Lewis's former home, "preparatory to moving to a smaller house".

"Major Lewis, after setting aside those papers which had special significance for him, began disposing of the others," wrote Hopper. "Thus it was that a great many things which I was never able to identify found their way on to a bonfire which burned steadily for three days."

According to Hopper, Lewis's gardener, who was instructed to burn the author's manuscripts, knew that Hopper had "the highest regard for anything in the master's hand". The gardener was instructed to burn a number of notebooks, but managed to convince Major Lewis to delay until Hopper could see them.

"By what seems more than coincidence, I appeared at The Kilns that very day and learned that unless I carried the papers away with me that afternoon they would indeed be destroyed," Hopper wrote. "There were so many that it took all my strength and energy to carry them back to Keble College." For 46 years, Hopper has spent his time sifting through the saved material before it is transported to Oxford's Bodleian Library. Four years ago, he realised that fragments of the famous Aeneid translation, referred to by Tolkien in his own letters, had escaped his attention. Since then he has worked with Reyes to piece together the translation, which exists in fragments spread across several notebooks.

Reyes and Hopper began collaborating when Reyes was a visiting scholar at Oxford University's Wolfson College.

"He asked me to write out any notes that would help a general reader understand the text," said Reyes.

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