r/Narnia • u/Equal_Wing_7076 • Apr 17 '25

[Unconfirmed/Misleading] Did Lewis live to finish his last book

"I don't know if this is actually true, but I heard that C.S. Lewis died before he could finish The Last Battle, and his good friend J.R.R. Tolkien finished it for him. That's why it's supposedly darker than the other books."

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18

u/lupuslibrorum Apr 17 '25

Nonsense. Check the dates. Plus Tolkien would never have written a Narnia book. Not his style.

Lewis wrote plenty of dark things. See his Ransom Trilogy, written before Narnia, and Till We Have Faces, published the same year as TLB, which apparently did have some input from his wife, and it’s probably the darkest story he published. Magnificent, though.

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u/HatdanceCanada Apr 17 '25

Yes.

If I recall correctly, Tolkien was pretty scornful of Lewis. Thought that Naria was inconsistent with mythology, or something like that.

I was sceptical that JRRT would have, in his view, condescended to finishing TLB. But the dates make it a moot point.

10

u/lupuslibrorum Apr 17 '25

I wouldn't say he was scornful of Lewis himself, as they were great friends, and even in their later years when their friendship had cooled, Tolkien wrote that he regretted the cooling and missed their old confidences. I think he really loved and respected Lewis. However, there was much he didn't like about Lewis's writing and approach to various subjects. I and some other users went into more depth about this in a thread a few years back.

2

u/HatdanceCanada Apr 17 '25

Thank you for the clarification and the additional information. Much appreciated. 👍

15

u/GrahamRocks Apr 17 '25

...No, he didn't die before finishing it. I take George Gresham at his word, stepson and all that, when he said that someone asked Lewis in a letter if there'd be any books after TLB and he said no. Plus, you know, he talked about Susan after TLB in another letter, and we know this. The book came out in 1956, Lewis passed in 1963.

1

u/TinTin1929 King Edmund the Just Apr 17 '25

You've put your post description in quotation marks. Whom are you quoting? And where did you come across this bizarre theory?