Winston Smith, call your office

[calimac]

Another trivial project: a revised edition of R.L. Green and Walter Hooper's 1974 biography of C.S. Lewis has been published in Britain, and I got it from A British Mail-Order Book Service. (Publisher HarperCollins; ISBN is 0-00-715714-2.) Unlike a supposedly revised edition in the US several years ago that only added a few photos, this one genuinely is revised. So I'm comparing the two editions to see what changes there are. I had great fun doing this with the two editions of Daniel Grotta's stunningly inept biography of Tolkien, and this, though hardly inept, is being fun too. So far my favorite change in this one is in the supposedly unchanged "Preface to the First Edition". In the original sentence "Walter Hooper's personal acquaintance with Lewis was shorter - fewer months indeed than Green's years - but much more intimate during that brief period," the last phrase has been removed. Oh ho, if only Kathryn Lindskoog, Hooper's scourge, were still alive to see that.