The Celian Moment & Other Essays

Charles Williams (1886-1945), friend of T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis and admired by W. H. Auden, was a versatile man of letters. He wrote supernatural thrillers, plays, theology and journalism but he saw poetry and criticism as being his real work. This is a new collection of his literary essays, taken from books, pamphlets and periodicals long out of print. The title essay develops Williams’s theory of poetry but is also a covert homage to the woman who was is second and unacknowledged love. The essays have been edited by Stephen Barber, for many years Treasurer of the Charles Williams Society and author of several articles on the writer.

This is the first collection of Williams’s literary essays for over fifty years.

“Williams argues that what comes to us in literature, especially poetry, is more real than life, and the job of the critic is to relate the two…while capable of the most astonishing fresh insights, he can sometimes come over as wild or obscure in some of his connections.” —Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, Church Times

“Stephen Barber’s enjoyable and rewarding new selection…his fine, deft 16-page introduction is so engaging that you may not at first consciously reflect on the depths of its thought and erudtion…Mr. Barber’s wealth of lucid annotation.” —David Dodds, editor of Williams’ Arthurian poems, Eclectic Orthodoxy

“As interest in Charles Williams as critic and poet continues to grow, the publication of these essays is a landmark. They will contribute very significantly to the current positive reassessment of so much of his writing on literary questions, and should be enthusiastically welcomed.” —Rowan Williams, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury and President of the Charles Wiliiams Society

“This collection of lost or forgotten essays by Charles Williams is fascinating. Offering his sometimes startling views on topics as diverse as the Russian Revolution and ‘The office of criticism,’ and on poets from Dante to Eliot, it illuminates his thinking and reveals his personality with fresh vividness.” —Grevel Lindop, author of Charles Williams: the Third Inkling