Very elusive in the dust wrapper

Lewis, C. S. ~ That Hideous Strength. A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups

First UK Printing : John Lane / The Bodley Head Limited, London: 1945

8vo., black cloth titled in gilt to spine; in the publisher’s green, yellow and black dust wrapper (9s. 6d. net); THE BOOK with white markings along lower edge of boards; slightly bumped and scuffed at corners with a couple of dents; printed on wartime economy paper, lightly toned throughout; with pencil markings now erased from the front free endpaper; very good, still, in the like DUST WRAPPER which is evenly browned, spotted at folds; chipped and creased at the folds running to some closed tears (4cm max); more so at the spine tips, with loss affecting some lettering at head; scarce to find at all, and entirely unrestored. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. Provenance: Gisborne Park Ex Libris tipped in to front paste-down; along with bookseller sticker of ‘Book Searchers, South Yarra’ to the lower front gutter. First edition of Lewis’ third book in his theological science fiction Space Trilogy, which was preceded in 1938 by Out of the Silent Planet, and in 1943 with Perelandra. Lewis began writing the first book in the series, Out of the Silent Planet, in 1937, after a conversation with J. R. R. Tolkien, who was a friend and colleague at Oxford University. The pair had discussed the decline of contemporary fiction, and had parted on the agreement that Lewis would write a space travel story, and Tolkien would pen a work based on the concept of time travel. While Tolkien failed to deliver on his promise, Lewis became so enamoured with the idea that he wrote another two works of fiction over the course of the war, of which this, the last offering, was published in 1945. In That Hideous Strength, the plot once again follows protagonist and philologist Edward Ransom as he attempts to resist demons which are trying to take over Earth. In a marked departure from the first two novels, the book is set predominantly on our home planet, and involves the N.I.C.E., a scientific institute which is in fact a front for sinister supernatural forces. The title of the book is taken directly from a 16th century poem entitled ‘The Monarche’ by the Scottish Knight David Lyndsay, and refers to the tower of Babel: "The shadow of that hyddeous strength, sax myle and more it is of length". Strongly influenced, as many writers were at the time, by the events which had just unfolded in Europe, the novel is set in post-war England, and explores themes of corruption and the abuse of power - in particular, the totalitarian society planned by the Nazi party. The antagonists, viewing human beings as frail and corruptible, believe that humanity can be improved by migrating out of pure flesh and blood, with Lewis highlighting the dangers of rejecting God’s design for us, and society falling into a dystopian nightmare. Lewis had explored such themes before: in The Screwtape Letters he had used the demon Screwtape to illustrate this point: their goal, Screwtape tells his nephew, is "to emotionalise and mythologise their science…If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls 'Forces' while denying the existence of 'spirits'—then the end of the war will be in sight." George Orwell would later write, of That Hideous Strength "Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that Mr Lewis attributes to his characters [the N.I.C.E. scientists], and we are within sight of the time when such dreams will be realisable." The book undoubtedly had some influence on his own dystopian classic, 1984, which was published just four years later. A very elusive title to find with the wrapper in any condition.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Very Good