Letters+to+Malcolm

LTM Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer XXII letters.

XX [17] XX.6 Purgatory

On 5 January 1953, Lewis wrote to Fr. Giovanni Calabria the following: "I invite your prayers about a work which I now have in hand. I am trying to write a book about private prayers for the use of the laity, especially for those who have been recently converted to the Christian faith and so far are without any sustained and regular habit of prayer. I tackled the job because I saw many no doubt very beautiful books written on this subject of prayer for the religious but few which instruct tiros and those still babes (so to say) in the Faith. I find many difficulties nor do I definitely know whether God wishes me to complete this task or not."
 * Lewis observations on LTM:** (excerpted from SpareOom letter #25399 from Jana Aagaard)

1) A footnote states that Lewis abandoned the task the following year (he wrote on 15 February 1954 to Sister Penelope CSMV, "I have had to abandon the book on prayer: it was clearly not for me.") but took it up about 10 years later resulting in Letters to M. 2) The next significant reference came in a letter to Edward Dell on 29 April 1963. Dell had asked Lewis to write a response to Bishop J. A. T. Robinson's book Honest to God. Lewis declined, stating: "There will be implicit answers to some of Robinson's nonsense in parts of a book on prayer which I've just finished, and I can 'do my bit' much better that way." 3) Finally, Lewis wrote to Jock Gibb on 28 June 1963: "I've thought and thought about the blurb [for the jacket of Letters to Malcolm] but find I just can't write it -- apparently I can hardly write the words either! I'd like you to make the point that the reader is merely being allowed to listen to two v. ordinary laymen discussing the practical & speculative problems of prayer as these appear to them: i.e. the author does not claim to be teaching. [emphasis in original] Wd. it be good to say 'Some passages are controversial but this is almost an accident. The wayfaring Christian cannot quite ignore recent Anglican theology when it has been built as a barricade across the high road.'"