LEWISIANA.NL

 

Appendix

to “The Discoverer of C. S. Lewis: Rescuing Ashley Sampson from Oblivion”,

by Arend Smilde, in Journal of Inklings Studies, vol. 15, nr. 2, October 2025.

 

          PDF download

 

 

MORE ABOUT ASHLEY SAMPSON

A leg-up to further research

 

1. The Centenary Press

2. The Christian Challenge Series

3. Sampson’s writings: a bibliography

4. Sampson’s writings: C. S. Lewis-related specimens

– Blurb for The Problem of Pain, 1940

– Fragment from the introduction to Famous English Sermons, 1940

– “The Father of Lies”, June 1943

– “C. S. Lewis: The Crusading Intellect”, October 1946

5. Walter de la Mare’s obituary, 1947

6. Further research

 

 

 

  1.  The Centenary Press, 1929-1947

Full list of publications, based on WorldCat.org, October 2024

including “The Christian Challenge Series”

 

The table below suggests that Ashley Sampson (1900–1947) founded the Centenary Press in 1929 and began working under that name for Geoffrey Bles in 1935. At least as early as 1933, both companies had their offices at the same London address – 22 Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, S.W.1, according to the The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook for that year. The 1936 edition of this yearbook has both companies at a new address: 2 Manchester Square, W.1. In the right-hand column of the table, “GB” indicates titles for which WorldCat has at least one single record stating both names in the year of the book’s first publication, or else has at least one record mentioning Bles and one record mentioning the Centenary Press in that year.

Several title pages of books published by the Centenary Press in 1939-1940, including the first two or three editions of C. S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain, have a title page only mentioning “The Centenary Press”, and they show yet another new London address: 37 Essex Street, Strand. In 1941 or early 1942, the publisher name on title pages of Centenary volumes begins to appear as “Geoffrey Bles: The Centenary Press”. Somewhat later, the London address changes to 52 Doughty Street, London. “The Centenary Press”, with the name “Geoffrey Bles” more and more consistently prefixed on title pages, was maintained as an imprint for more than a decade after the buyout by Bles, and was discontinued after 1947, the year of Sampson’s death.

Volumes in the “Christian Challenge” series (1936-1945) are marked “CC” in the second column of the table, and the series is listed separately in section 2, below. Sampson originally edited the series neither for the Geoffrey Bles nor for the Centenary Press, but for a publisher and/or imprint named “John Heritage: The Unicorn Press”. Hence for many of the volumes published prior to 1939, WorldCat has records featuring the Heritage/Unicorn name, mostly in addition to records featuring Bles and/or Centenary. Five of these early Christian Challenge volumes from Heritage/Unicorn have no record mentioning Geoffrey Bles and/or Centenary Press; they are marked “H/U” in the right-hand column, and it would seem fair to say that these titles do not strictly belong in a list of publications from the Centenary Press. It is thus very much as if Sampson, around the time he sold the Centenary Press to Geoffrey Bles, was editing the incipient Christian Challenge series for the Unicorn Press, and that the  series was soon transferred to Geoffrey Bles in the wake of its editor and his Centenary Press. No further titles in the series appeared with the Heritage/Unicorn name after 1938.¹ In the table, all Centenary books (including Christian Challenge volumes) which have no WorldCat record mentioning the Centenary Press and/or Geoffrey Bles for the year of first publication are followed by a note in square brackets mentioning their original year of publication and their original publisher – mostly, but not invariably, Heritage/Unicorn or Geoffrey Bles.

C. S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain first appeared as a volume in the Christian Challenge series published by “The Centenary Press” on 18 October 1940, and saw its seventeenth printing six years later in October 1946. The eighteenth printing, in 1950, was the first in which the Centenary name was omitted from the title page and jacket, and the series name no longer appears on the front end paper, as had been usual; yet the back end paper still features a list of fourteen available titles in the series, with Ashley Sampson still being mentioned as the editor. From its 1957 paperback edition on, The Problem of Pain was published by Collins / Fontana Books and presented as one of the “Religious Books in the Fontana Series”.

Jackets of Lewis’s books featuring only the name “Geoffrey Bles” on its jacket while the book’s title page still has the combined Bles/Centenary name can be found as early as March 1943 (Christian Behaviour, first edition). The stages by which listings of the Christian Challenge series, review excerpts of its volumes, and the names of Ashley Sampson and the Centenary Press disappeared from title pages, jackets and cloth covers of relevant publications may be different for every reprinted book originally published with the Centenary imprint.

 

H. F. B. Mackay	·	Assistants at the Passion	1929	·
Clayton, P.B.	·	Letters from Flanders	1932	·
Father, Thomas	·	The Highway of the Church’s Year	1932	·
Mackay, H. B. F.	·	Studies in the Ministry of Our Lord	1932	·
Maxwell, Donald	·	A Pilgrimage of the Thames	1932	·
Morse-Boycott, C. L.	·	Lead, Kindly Light: The saints and heroes of the Oxford Movement	1932	·
Baker, A. E.	·	Jesus	1933	·
Dobson, Cyril Comyn	·	The Face of Christ: Earliest likenesses from the catacombs	1933	·
Edwards, R. A.	·	Plain Tales from the Slums	1933	·
Hunt, R. N. Carey	·	Calvin	1933	·
Huntington, James O. S., & Karl Tiedemann	·	The School of the Eternal: Outlines for use in retreat or in daily mental prayer	1933	·
Kirk, K. E. (bishop of Oxford)	·	Standpoints: A series of discussions	1933	·
Kirk, Kenneth E.	·	Marriage and Divorce	1933	·
Lockhart, D. D. A.	·	St. Columba’s Companion to the English Liturgy	1933	·
Lockhart, J. G.	·	Babel Visited: A churchman in Soviet Russia	1933	·
Mackay, H. B. F.	·	The Message of Francis of Assisi	1933	·
Mackay, H. B. F.	·	The Twelve Gates (sermons)	1933	·
Mackay, H. B. F.	·	Difficulties in the Way of Discipleship	1933	·
Mortimer, R. C.	·	Gambling	1933	·
Rosenthal, G. D.	·	Yesterday, To-day and Forever	1933	·
Thurston, Herbert	·	Superstition: A backward glance over nineteen centuries	1933	·
Baker, A. E.	·	Prophets for an Age of Doubt	1934	·
Beevor, Humphrey	·	The Anglican Armoury [articles from Church Times]	1934	·
Carpenter, S. C.	·	The Church and Politics	1934	·
Chavasse, Claude	·	Simple Meditations on the Twelve Mysteries of the Litany	1934	·
Frost, Bede	·	The Riches of Christ: Readings for Lent	1934	·
Hall, R. L.	·	Earning and Spending	1934	·
Mackay, H. F. B.	·	Followers in the Way	1934	·
Quack-Quack (pseud.)	·	The Rector Explains His Position, and other verses	1934	·
––	·	The New Green Quarterly [magazine, 1935–1937]	1935	·
Berdyaev, Nicolas	·	Freedom and the Spirit	1935	gb
Bulgakov, Sergej N.	·	The Orthodox Church	1935	·
D’Arcy, Martin Cyril	·	Mirage and Truth	1935	·
Demant, V. A. (ed.)	·	Faith that Illuminates	1935	·
Essex, R. S.	·	Parish Practicalities	1935	·
Frere, W. H.	·	Recollections of Malines	1935	·
Frost, Bede	·	Founded Upon a Rock: Introd. to the Sermon on the Mount	1935	·
Lockhart, J. G.	·	Charles Lindley, viscount Halifax	1935	gb
Mackay, H. B. F.	·	Some Studies in the Old Testament	1935	·
Mackay, H. B. F.	·	The Adventures of Paul of Tarsus	1935	·
Misheyev, N.	·	A Heroic Legend	1935	·
Rappaport, A. S.	·	The Psalms in Life, Legend and Literature	1935	·
Snow, George	·	A Guide to Belief	1935	·
Winckworth, Peter	·	Sensible Christians	1935	·
Baker, A. E.	·	These Holy Mysteries: A study of the Eucharist	1936	·
Bell, Bernard I.	·	A Catholic Looks at his World	1936	·
Berdyaev, Nicolas	·	The Meaning of History	1936	gb
Duncan-Jones, Caroline M.	·	The Lord’s Minstrel (A simple history of S. Francis of Assisi) [Appleton 1928]	1936	·
Funck-Brentano, Frantz	·	The Renaissance	1936	·
Ingram, Kenneth	·	Basil Jellicoe	1936	·
Mackay, H.F.B.	·	Some Studies in the New Testament (sermons)	1936	·
May, J. Lewis	·	Cardinal Newman: A study [Geoffrey Bles 1929]	1936	gb
Ommanney, G. C.	·	Ommanney of Sheffield	1936	·
Rosenthal, G. D.	·	Survival	1936	·
Snow, George	·	A Guide to Confirmation	1936	·
Watkin, Edward Ingram	cc	Theism, Agnosticism and Atheism*	1936	h/u
Amphlett Micklewright, F. H.	·	Catholics and the Need for Revolution	1937	·
Baker, A. E.	·	The Divine Christ	1937	·
Berdyaev, Nicolas	·	The Origin of Russian Communism	1937	gb
Berdyaev, Nicolas	·	The Destiny of Man	1937	gb
Collins, L. J.	cc	The New Testament Problem*	1937	h/u
Dark, Sidney	·	Mackay of All Saints’	1937	·
Gage-Brown, C. L. (ed.)	·	St. Christopher’s Prayer Book	1937	·
Hardman, Oscar	cc	The Christian Doctrine of Grace	1937	·
James, E. O.	cc	The Origins of Religion [John Murray 1933]	1937	·
Mackay, H. B. F.	·	Last Addresses	1937	·
Maritain, Jacques	·	The Degrees of Knowledge	1937	gb
Maryon-Wilson, Percy	·	In Whose Heart Are They Ways: Short studies in Christian Progress	1937	·
Mozley, John Kenneth	cc	The Doctrine of the Incarnation [cc/hu 1936]	1937	·
Reckitt, Maurice B.	cc	Religion in Social Action	1937	·
Relton, H. Maurice	cc	Religion and the State*	1937	h/u
Selwyn, E. G.	cc	A History of Christian Thought	1937	·
Thornton, L. S.	cc	The Doctrine of the Atonement	1937	·
Underhill, F. L.	·	Saint Peter	1937	·
Beevor, Humphry	·	Peace and Pacifism	1938	·
Bell, Bernard I.	·	In the City of Confusion [Lenten addresses]	1938	·
Berdyaev, Nicolas	·	Solitude and Society	1938	gb
Elliott-Binns, L.	cc	The Church in the Ancient World*	1938	h/u
Ford, G. P.	·	Man’s Desperate Need	1938	·
Garvie, A. E.	cc	Christian Moral Conduct	1938	·
Lofthouse, W. F.	cc	Christianity in the Social State [cc/hu 1936]	1938	·
MacDonald, A. J.	cc	God, Creation and Revelation*	1938	h/u
Maritain, Jacques	·	True Humanism	1938	gb
Maryon-Wilson, Percy	·	Whom the Lord Hath Redeemed: Christian ideals in everyday life	1938	·
Mendizábal Villalba, A.	·	The Martyrdom of Spain: Origins of a civil war	1938	gb
Newsholme, H. P.	cc	Christian Ethics and Social Health [cc/hu 1937]	1938	·
Peck, W. G.	·	The Salvation of Modern Man	1938	·
Rosenthal, G. D.	·	Sins of the Saints [New York 1937]	1938	·
Scott, Nigel Winbolt	·	Reveille (On church social action)	1938	·
Simmonds, Leslie	·	What Think Ye of Christ?	1938	·
Sykes, Norman	cc	The Crisis of the Reformation	1938	·
Taylor, A. E.	cc	The Christian Hope of Immortality	1938	·
Tennant, F. R.	cc	The Nature of Belief	1938	·
Tomkinson, C. E.	·	The Stations of the Cross	1938	·
Vidler, Alec	cc	God’s Demand and Man’s Response	1938	·
Berdyaev, Nicolas	·	Spirit and Reality	1939	gb
Congar, Yves	·	Divided Christendom: A Catholic study of the problem of reunion	1939	gb
Lockhart, D. D. A.	·	God’s Family at Worship	1939	·
Maritain, Jacques	·	Antisemitism	1939	gb
Pittenger, W. Norman	cc	The Approach to Christianity	1939	·
Rayneri-Maylor, A. R. (ed.)	·	To Worship and to Serve. A little book of private prayer	1939	·
Rosenthal, D. G.	·	Quest and Achievement (sermons)	1939	·
Shebbeare. C. J.	cc	Christianity and Other Religions	1939	·
Selbie, W. B.	cc	Christianity and the New Psychology	1939	·
Sturzo, Luigi	·	Church and State	1939	gb
Tribe, R. H.	·	Worship: Its social significance	1939	·
Alington, Cyril	cc	The Kingdom of God	1940	·
Berdyaev, Nicolas	·	Leontiev	1940	gb
David, A. A.	cc	The Activity of God	1940	·
Lewis, C. S.	cc	The Problem of Pain	1940	gb
Maritain, Jacques	·	Scholasticism and Politics [New York: Macmillan 1940]	1940	gb
Maritain, Jacques	·	Science and Wisdom	1940	gb
Vaizey, George	·	Religion and Business	1940	·
Lloyd, Roger Brashaigh	cc	The Mastery of Evil	1941	·
Lewis, C. S.	·	The Screwtape Letters	1942	gb
Lewis, C. S.	·	Broadcast Talks	1942	·
Murray, Rosalind	·	Time and the Timeless	1942	·
Williams, Charles	cc	The Forgiveness of Sins	1942	gb
Berdyaev, Nicolas	·	Slavery and Freedom	1943	gb
Lewis, C. S.	·	Christian Behaviour	1943	gb
Maritain, Jacques	·	Redeeming the Time	1943	gb
Murray, Rosalind	cc	The Life of Faith	1943	·
Solovyov, Vladimir S.	·	Russia and the Universal Church	1943	gb
Athanase	·	The Incarnation of the World of God	1944	gb
Davies, David Richard	·	Down, Peacock’s Feathers	1944	·
Lewis, C. S.	·	Beyond Personality	1944	gb
Maritain, Jacques	·	The Rights of Man and Natural Law	1944	gb
Vann, Gerald	cc	The Heart of Man	1944	·
Anson, D. C. & J. Maritain	·	Christianity and Democracy	1945	gb
Chambers, P. Franklin	·	Baron von Hugel: Man of God	1945	gb
Lewis, C. S.	·	The Great Divorce	1945	gb
Ramsey, Michael	cc	The Resurrection of Christ	1945	·
Solovyov, Vladimir S.	·	The Meaning of Love	1945	gb
Brunner, E. & Karl Barth	·	Natural Theology & No!	1946	gb
Edwards, D. A.	·	The Defence of the Gospel	1946	·
Lewis, C. S.	·	George MacDonald: An Anthology	1946	gb
Morgan, Edmund R.	·	The Mission of the Church: A commentary	1946	gb
Snow, George	·	Letters to a Confirmand	1946	·
Berdyaev, Nicolas	·	The Russian Idea	1947	gb
Davies, D. R.	·	The Sin of Our Age	1947	gb
Edwards, D. A.	·	Jesus, the Gospel portrait	1947	·
Hebert, A. G.	·	Scripture and the Faith	1947	gb
Lewis, C. S.	·	Miracles: A preliminary study	1947	gb
Mackay, H. F. B.	·	Pilgrim’s Progress in the World To-day [Allan, London 1930]	1947	·
Sturzo, Luigi	·	The True Life: Sociology of the supernatural	1947	gb

 

 

  2.  The Christian Challenge Series

 

     (i)  Volumes

    (ii)  British reprints

  (iii)  Authors

 

(i) Volumes

The list is based on data gathered from WorldCat, November 2024, and from the jackets and endpapers of several early editions of The Problem of Pain and some other volumes in the series, 1940-1950. As noted in section 1, all the early “Christian Challenge” volumes appearing in the years 1936-1938 were first published by “John Heritage: the Unicorn Press” (H/U), with a Centenary Press edition coming out in either the same or the next year, and in one case nine years later. The five titles marked “[H/U]” have no WorldCat record stating a Centenary Press edition.

The numbers in the left-hand column mark out the twenty-three titles listed (in this order, but without volume numbers) as “Christian Challenge Series” on the front flap of the second-edition jacket of The Problem of Pain (December 1940). The right-hand column signals a title’s inclusion in the “complete list” of Christian Challenge volumes on the end papers of three later editions of The Problem of Pain: x 13th ed. (May 1944); y 15th ed. (May 1945); z 18th ed. (1950). Notes to this are given immediately following it.

				x	y	z
1.	1936	Lofthouse, W. F.	Christianity in the Social State
2.	1936	Mozley, J. K.	The Doctrine of the Incarnation			×
3.	1936	Watkin, Edward Ingram	Theism, Agnosticism and Atheism [H/U]
4.	1937	James, E. O.	The Origins of Religion
5.	1937	Thornton, Lionel Spencer	The Doctrine of the Atonement
6.	1937	Newsholme, H. P.	Christian Ethics and Social Health
7.	1937	Selwyn, E. Gordon (ed.)	History of Christian Thought¹	×	×	×
8.	1937	Relton, H. Maurice	Religion and the State [H/U]
9.	1937	Collins, L. J.	The New Testament Problem [H/U]
10.	1937	Hardman, Oscar	The Christian Doctrine of Grace			×
11.	1937	Reckitt, Maurice B.	Religion in Social Action
12.	1938	Garvie, A. E.	Christian Moral Conduct
13.	1939	Shebbeare, C. J.	Christianity and Other Religions	×	×	×
14.	1938	Taylor, A. E.	The Christian Hope of Immortality			×
15.	1938	Macdonald, A. J.	God, Creation and Revelation [H/U]
16.	1938	Elliott-Binns, L.	The Church in the Ancient World [H/U]
17.	1938	Sykes, Norman	The Crisis of the Reformation			×
18.	1938	Vidler, Alec R.	God’s Demand and Man’s Response			×
19.	1939	Selbie, W. B.	Christianity and the New Psychology
20.	1939	Pittenger, Norman	The Approach to Christianity
21.	1940	Lewis, C. S.	The Problem of Pain	×	×	×
22.	1940	Alington, C. A.	The Kingdom of God	×	×	×
23	1940	David, A. A. (Bp. Liverpool)	The Activity of God²	×	×	×
	1941	Lloyd, Roger Bradshaigh	The Mastery of Evil	×	×	×
	1942	Williams, Charles	The Forgiveness of Sins	×	×
	1943	Murray, Rosalind	The Life of Faith	×	×	×
	1943	Tennant, F. R.	The Nature of Belief³	×	×	×
	1944	Vann, Gerald	The Heart of Man⁴	×
	1945	Ramsey, Michael	The Resurrection of Christ⁵		×	×
1. Revised as A Short History of Christian Thought, Bles 1949. 2. David’s volume was probably the first to appear in 1940; its end papers list all preceding volumes except Lewis and Alington. Its jacket features quotes from reviews for the first eight titles, and shortened blurb texts for the others. 3. One of WorldCat’s records for Tennant’s volume gives 1938 as its year of publication. This is almost certainly wrong. 4. In the revised Green & Hooper biography of C. S. Lewis (London: HarperCollins 2002), p. 220, Hooper mentions Vann’s book as one of the “many valuable titles” in the Christian Challenge Series. However, The Heart of Man is not listed on any of the relevant jackets, flaps or endpapers of those volumes I have inspected. WorldCat, while mentioning the Centenary Press as the book’s original publisher, has not a single record specifying a connection with the Christian Challenge series. Perhaps Hooper confused the book’s status as a Centenary title with that of a Christian Challenge volume. Based on the title, it seems plausible to suspect that Vann’s book, whether or not it was part of the series, was intended to compensate for a projected volume entitled The Nature of Man by V. A. Demant which never materialized. The latter was announced on the end paper of the May 1944 (13th) edition of The Problem of Pain. Demant’s volume was not the only one to be announced but never published. The series list on the front flap of Collins’s The New Testament Problem (1937) includes four such titles. 5. One of World Cat’s forty-four records for Ramsey’s volume states 1936 as the year of publication. As in the case of Tennant’s volume, this is almost certainly wrong, and perhaps a mistyped year number “1963”.

 

(ii) British reprints

Of the twenty-nine volumes published in the Christian Challenge series, thirteen were never reprinted. The sixteen volumes that saw one or more reprints are listed below. The right-hand column records each reprint as a shortened year number (38 for 1938, etc.). At least four of the post-war reprints (Hardman, Sykes, Taylor, Vidler) were revised editions of pre-war titles which had been “destroyed by enemy action”. The list is based on WorldCat.org, and (for Lewis’s volume) www.cslewiseditions.com.

1938	Lofthouse, Christianity in the Social State	38
1936	Mozley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation	37, 49
1937	Hardman, The Christian Doctrine of Grace	46, 47
1937	James, The Origins of Religion	[33,] 49
1937	Newsholme, Christian Ethics & Social Health	38
1937	Selwyn, History of Christian Thought	49
1937	Thornton, The Doctrine of the Atonement	38
1938	Sykes, The Crisis of the Reformation	46, 50, 55, 55, 61, 65, 67
1938	Taylor, The Christian Hope of Immortality	39, 45, 46, 47, 79
1938	Vidler, God’s Demand and Man’s Response	46
1940	Lewis, The Problem of Pain¹	40, 41, 41, 41, 41, 42, 42, 42, 43, 43, 43, 44, 45, 45, 46, 46, 50, 52, 56
1941	Lloyd, The Mastery of Evil	42, 44
1942	Williams, The Forgiveness of Sins	52, 84, 2018
1943	Murray, the Life of Faith	44, 63
1944	Vann, The Heart of Man²	45, 46, 47, 52, 53, 57, 62, 63, 2021
1945	Ramsey,³ The Resurrection of Christ	46, 48, 50, 56, 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 71

 

1. Centenary and Bles editions only. In 1957 a Fontana paperback edition of The Problem of Pain was published which saw its own twenty-third edition in 1983, making a total of 44 British editions by that year. See www.cslewiseditions.com for further British and for all American editions.    2. See note 4 on Vann’s volume in the previous table.    3. Michael Ramsey (1904-88) was Archbishop of York 1956-61 and of Canterbury 1961-74.

 

 

(iii) Authors

A glimpse of Sampson’s early work on the series is offered by some letters from T. S. Eliot to him of 1935-1937 (including the editorial notes) accessible online at TSEliot.com. In mid-1935 Sampson was soliciting (without success) a volume from Eliot on “The Place of Religion in Art” for the series. In January 1936 Eliot responded to a prospectus for the series: “I must congratulate you on having such eminent and also such well-chosen names. I don’t know how you have managed to succeed so well. … But as for myself, I am more and more certain that I ought to leave this sort of work until my creative powers, such as they are, have become debile.” An editorial note classifies the prospectus as “not traced”. In May 1937 Eliot responded to a request from Sampson for advice on potential lay contributors to the series.²

The list is in alphabetical order. Each author’s name and years of birth and death are followed by title and publication year of their contribution to the series. The details have been obtained from Wikipedia, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (marked *), and other online resources if required, November 2024. No details on C. S. Lewis are here included.

 

Alington,* Cyril Argentine (1872-1955; The Kingdom of God, 1940) · Double First in Literae humaniores Trinity, Oxford 1895; Doctor of Divinity, Oxford 1917; All Souls fellowship 1896; ordained deacon 1899, priest 1901; schoolmaster Eton 1899; headmaster Shrewsbury 1908-17, Eton 1917-33; chaplain to the King 1921-33; dean of Durham 1933-51. Wrote more than 50 books, including detectives.

Collins,* Lewis John (1905-1982; The New Testament Problem, 1937) · Ordained Anglican priest 1928; chaplain of Oriel College, 1937; RAF chaplain during WW II; founder of Christian Action, 1945; canon of St Paul’s London, 1948-81; active in several radical political movements in UK. –.

David,* Albert Augustus (1867-1950; The Activity of God, 1940) · Double First in Literae humaniores Trinity, Oxford; ordained priest 1895; headmaster Clifton College 1905, Rugby 1909, promoting educational innovation; D.D. 1910; bishop of St Edmundsbury 1921-23, Liverpool 1923-44, with controversies over relations with Unitarianism.

Elliott-Binns, Leonard (1885-1963; The Church in the Ancient World, 1938) · Historian and theologian, ordained CofE, parish priest for most of his life; president Society for OT Study 1958.

Garvie,* Alfred Ernest (1861-1945; Christian Moral Conduct, 1938) · Congregational minister; grad. Mansfield College, Oxford 1892; Professor of the philosophy of theism, comparative religion, and Christian ethics at Hackney College and New College, Hampstead, in 1903; active in Life & Work and Faith & Order; honorary doctorates from Glasgow (1903), Berlin (1930) and New College, London; remained active in British Christianity after 1933 retirement.

Hardman, Oscar (1880-1964; The Christian Doctrine of Grace, 1937) · Priest-in-charge of Monksilver and Elsworth, Somerset; Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London 1957; author of The Ideals of Asceticism (1924), The Resurrection of the Body (SPCK 1934) and A History of Christian Worship (1937).

James,* Edwin Oliver James (1888-1972; The Origins of Religion, 1937) · Ordained in the Anglican church without theological training 1911; curate or vicar until 1933; PhD in anthropology 1929, UCL; Professor History & Philosophy of Religion in Leeds, 1933; Wilde reader in natural and comparative religion, Oxford 1939-42; Professor Philosophy of Religion, King’s College, London, 1945-55; chaplain of All Souls, Oxford 1960-72.

Lewis,* C. S. (1898-1963; The Problem of Pain, CP 1940) ·

Lloyd, Roger Bradshaigh (1901-1966; The Mastery of Evil, 1941) · Anglican priest, prolific and versatile writer. Ordained in 1924; after serving several parishes, canon residentiary and then Vice-Dean of Winchester.

Lofthouse, William Frederick (1871-1965; Christianity in the Social State, 1936) · Double First in Literae humaniores Trinity, Oxford; trained for the Methodist ministry at Richmond College, London; served as minister for some years; OT tutor at Handsworth theological College 1904-1924, Principal 1925-40; co-founder Methodist Union of Social Service; active in “Life & Work” and “Faith & Order” during 1930s.

Macdonald, Allan John (1887-1959; God, Creation and Revelation, 1938) · Prebendary of St Paul’s, London.

Mozley,* John Kenneth (1883-1946; The Doctrine of the Incarnation, 1936) · Anglican priest 1910, fellow and (1909) dean of Pembroke College, Oxford 1907-19; principal of Leeds Clergy School 1920-25, canon and chancellor of St Paul’s, London, 1930-41; preacher of Lincoln’s Inn, 1937-44. Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s London 1930-41.

Murray, Rosalind (1890-1967; The Life of Faith, 1943) · Novelist and religious writer, converted to Catholicism in 1933; daughter of classicist Gilbert Murray.

Newsholme, Henry Pratt (1885-1955; Christian Ethics and Social Health, 1937) · Physician and writer; medical officer of health of Birmingham 1927-1950; Professor of hygiene and public health at Birmingham University 1937–1941; was a theistic evolutionist, held religious views promoted in several books; received into the Catholic Church 1939.

Pittenger, William Norman (1905-1997; The Approach to Christianity, 1939) · Born in Boston, ordained Anglican (Episcopalian) priest 1937, Instructor in Christian Apologetics at General Theological Seminary, New York, 1935-1951; Professor there until 1966 when he moved to England to spend the rest of his life as an honorary member of King’s College, Cambridge. Prolific author.

Ramsey,* Arthur Michael (1904-1988; The Resurrection of Christ: An essay in Biblical theology, 1945) · First in Theology, Magdalene, Cambridge 1927; trained at Cuddesdon (where he became friends with Austin Farrer), ordained for the Anglican ministry 1928; lecturer at Bishop’s Hostel, Lincoln; various ministries; Canon of Durham Cathedral and Van Mildert Professor of Divinity, Durham 1940-1950, Regius Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, 1950; Bishop of Durham 1952; Archbishop of York 1956; Archbishop of Canterbury 1961-74.

Reckitt,* Maurice Benington (1888-1980; Religion in Social Action, 1937) · Writer and Christian sociologist; graduated (history) from St John’s Oxford 1907; edited Church Socialist 1915-19; chairman, League of the Kingdom of God 1923; edited Christendom 1931-1950; founded Christendom Trust (now M.B. Reckitt Trust) 1971.

Relton, Herbert Maurice (1882-1971; Religion and the State, 1937) · Professor of Dogmatic Theology at King’s College London 1924.

Selbie, William Boothby (1862-1944; Christianity and the New Psychology, 1939) · Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford 1909-32; chairman of Congregational Union of England and Wales, 1914; president of National Free Church Council, 1917; renowned preacher, advocate of ecumenism, supporter of ordination of women.

Selwyn, Edward Gordon (1885-1959; – History of Christian Thought: A Volume of Essays edited by Selwyn, 1937) · Anglican priest and theologian, ordained 1909; dean of Winchester 1931-58; editor of Theology 1920-34.

Shebbeare, Charles John (1865-1945; Christianity and the Other Religions, 1939) · Clergyman and theological author. Wilde Reader in Comparative Religion.

Sykes, Norman (1897-1961; The Crisis of the Reformation, 1938) · Anglican priest and church historian; Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Emmanuel College, Cambridge 1944; Dean of Winchester 1958-61.

Taylor,* Alfred Edward (1869-1945; The Christian Hope of Immortality, 1938) · Philosopher; double First in Literae humaniores New College, Oxford, 1891. Professor of Philosophy McGill Univ., Montreal 1903-08; of Moral Philosophy St Andrews 1908-24; same chair in Edinborough, 1924-41; “incapable of writing without a wealth of learned allusion”. Gifford Lectures 1926-28 “The Faith of a Moralist; contributed “Theism” to Hastings, Encyclopaedia. of Religion and Ethics.

Tennant, Frederick Robert (1866-1957; The Nature of Belief, 1943) · Theologian and philosopher of religion. First studied sciences, then theology, and was ordained. Advocated theistic evolution: attempted “an integrative synthesis of the doctrines of the fall and original sin with Huxley’s claims of conflict between Darwinian thought and Christianity”.

Thornton, Lionel Spencer (1884-1960; The Doctrine of the Atonement, 1938) · Process theologian, priest of the Community of the Resurrection (Mirfield, Yorkshire) from 1913, lecturer in dogmatic theology at the College of the Resurrection from 1914.

Vann, Gerald (1906-1963; The Heart of Man, 1944) · Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher. Joined Dominican order 1923; ordained priest 1929, doctorate Theology Rome 1931. Wrote on just-war theory and Thomas Aquinas.

Vidler,* Alexander Roper (1899-1991; God’s Demand and Man’s Response: A course of addresses delivered during the mission to Oxford University, January 29th–February 7th, 1938, 1938) · Ordained priest 1922; curate in Newcastle and Birmingham; Co-editor of Christian News-Letter during WW II; editor of Theology 1940-1964; canon at St George’s Chapel, Windsor 1948; Dean of King’s College, Cambridge 1954; specialized in “theological midwifery” (E. Robertson, “A tribute to Alec Vidler”, Theology, 92, November 1989, 459–66).

Watkin,* Edward Ingram (1888-1981; Theism, Agnosticism and Atheism, 1936) · Catholic non-Thomist philosopher, pacifist and writer; friend of Luigi Sturzo. another Centenary Press author.

Williams,* Charles Walter Stansby (1886-1945; The Forgiveness of Sins, 1942) · Major 20th-c. writer of Christian fantasy. Unfinished study at UCL, work in a Methodist bookroom 1904; proofreading assistant for Oxford UP 1908, then soon editor at OUP until his death. Edited first major Kierkegaard edition in English. Wrote poetry, novels, drama and theology.

 

 

  3.  Sampon’s writings: A bibliography

 

The list is a first attempt, without pretence to completeness. It is based on Archive.org, JSTOR.org, WorldCat.org, and various online newspaper archives consulted in the years 2020-2025. Dates of publication are given in the format yymmdd, with 00 for unspecified day and month numbers.

 

251017  poem “The Prisoner” · The Spectator, p. 654. Reprinted in Living Age (US), 2 January 1926, p. 43.

260400  poem “Psychoanalysis” · The New Coterie: A Quarterly. Number Two, pp. 63-64.

290700  story “From Whose Bourne” · The Dial: A Semi-monthly Journal of Literary Criticism (US), pp. 552-558.

290000  introduction to Robert Louis Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books. London: British Books Ltd.³

310103  review C. E. Whiting, Studies in English Puritanism (1660-1688); E. Boyd, Ex-Jesuit. “Important Studies in Two Faiths” · The Daily Telegraph.

310600  review Cecil Roberts, Half-Way: An Autobiography. “Stranger than Fiction” · The Bookman, p. 163.

310106  review Herbert Read, Wordsworth; C. H. Herford, Wordsworth. “Two Important Portraits” · The Daily Telegraph.

310203  review The Works of Oscar Wilde. “An ‘Omnibus’ Wilde” · The Daily Telegraph.

310424  review They Walk Again: An Anthology of Ghost Stories chosen by Colin de la Mare, with an Introduction by Walter de la Mare. “Tales of Ghosts and Marvels” · The Daily Telegraph.

310519  review Llewelyn Powys, A Pagan’s Pilgrimage; Hilaire Belloc, A Conversation with a Cat and Others. “The Pagan and the Catholic” · The Daily Telegraph.

310605  review Michael Sadleir, Bulwer: A Panorama. “Edward Bulwer Lytton” · The Daily Telegraph.

310623  review Jean Stewart, Poetry in France and England; Fredegond Shove, Christina Rossetti: A Study. “Poetry of Two Nations” · The Daily Telegraph.

310710  review Frederick M. Smith, Some Friends of Doctor Johnson. “ Dr. Johnsons’s Circle” · The Daily Telegraph.

310800  review H. W. Hadow, English Music. “The Glory of England” · The Bookman, p. 265.

310901  review Hilaire Belloc, Essays of a Catholic; M. C. D’Arcy, The Nature of Belief. “ Two Catholic Thinkers” · The Daily Telegraph.

311000  article “The Art of Mr de la Mare” · The Bookman, pp. 41-42.

311023  review S. R. Lysaght, The Immortal Jew: A Drama. “ A Play to Read” · The Daily Telegraph.

311100  review George Saintsbury, A Consideration of Thackeray. “William Makepeace Thackeray” · The Bookman, p. 123.

311208  review George Cockerill, Love’s Universe; John Lehmann, A Garden Revisited and Other Poems; C. Day Lewis, From Feathers to Iron. “A Batch of New Poetry” · The Daily Telegraph.

320100  review Gustav Flaubert, Salammbô; Harrison Ainsworth, Rookwood; The Works of Charles Dickens; The Works of Sir Walter Scott; Shakespeare, Henry the Fifth; Shakespeare, King Lear. “Some notable reprints” · The Bookman, p. 233.

320102  poem “Requiem” · The Spectator, 2 January 1932, p. 13.

320200  article “Modern Scandinavian Literature”, The Bookman, pp. 269-270.

320219  review Ronald Knox & Arnold Lunn, Difficulties. “Lunn v. Knox” · The Daily Telegraph.

320401  review Lewis Gibbs, A Day’s Tale; Maude Meagher, Fantastic Traveller; Frances Ogilvie, Green Bondage · The Fortnightly Review, pp. 540-542.

320403  review Edward A. Strecker, & Kenneth E. Appel, “Discovering Ourselves”; Lindsay Dewar & Cyril E. Hudson, “A Manual of Pastoral Psychology”. “Practical Psychology” · The Sunday Times, p. 12.

320426  review J. B. Morton, Sobieski: King of Poland. “ A Patriot King” · The Daily Telegraph.

320500  article “How Classical authors worked” · The Bookman, pp. 100-102.

320500  review Short Stories of Soviet Russia; Irish Short Stories, ed. George A. Birmingham; Italian Short Stories. “Stories of Three Nations” · The Bookman, p. 121.

320529  review J. B. S. Haldane, The Causes of Evolution. “Evolution” · The Sunday Times, p. 10.

320619  review Snyder, The Life of Robert Burns. “A Life of Burns” · The Sunday Times, p. 11.

320626  review Ernest Dimnet, What We Live By. “‘Upstairs’ and ‘Downstairs’” · The Sunday Times, p. 11.

320703  review J. Lewis May, Father Tyrrell and the Modernist Movement. “A Catholic Modernist · The Sunday Times, p. 12.

320821  review Arthur Cushman, A History of Christian Thought I: Early and Eastern; William Howard-Flanders, The Church of England and Her Reformations. “Church Life and Thought” · The Sunday Times, p. 6.

320909  review J. B. S. Haldane, Materialism; G. E. Newsome, The New Morality. “Riddle of the Universe” · The Daily Telegraph.

320918  review Evelyn Underhill, The Golden Sequence; E. Boyd Barrett, Absolution; G. E. Newsom, The New Morality. “Guilt and Its Cleansing” · The Sunday Times, p. 12.

320930  review John Masefield, A Tale of Troy. “ The Laureate’s New Poem on Troy” · The Daily Telegraph.

321016  review J. B. S. Haldane, Materialism. “Science Not Enough · The Sunday Times. p. 11.

321104  review Bertram G. Theobald, Enter Francis Bacon. “ Bacon’s Claim Revived: Authorship of the Plays” · The Daily Telegraph.

321230  review Kate Mary Bruce, Tory Blaize. “New Fiction” · The Daily Telegraph.

330107  poem “Man the Ass” · The Saturday Review,⁴ p. 14.

330204  review Stephen Spender, Poems; The Writers’ Club Anthology, ed. Margaret L. Woods; The Collected Poems of Herbert Palmer; L. Aaronson, Poems; Richard Aldington, the Eaten Heart; Known Signature, ed. John Gawsworth. “Some New Poetry” · The Saturday Review, p. 122.

330211  review R. L. Mégroz, Modern English Poetry (1882-1932). “Fifty Years of Verse” · The Saturday Review, p. 145.

330319  review L. V. Lester-Garland,“The Religious Philosophy of Baron von Hügel; Paul Monçeaux, St. Jerome: The Early Years. “The Catholic Mind”, · The Sunday Times, p. 10.

330325  review Edmund Chambers, ed. Charles Williams, A Short Life of Shakespeare; Alfred Douglas, The True History of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. “Shakespeare of the Sonnets” · The Saturday Review, p. 291.

330328  review John Macmurray, Interpreting the Universe. “Religion in the Making” · The Daily Telegraph.

330331  review Walter Wilkinson, A Sussex Peep-Show. “In Sussex with a Peep-Show” · The Daily Telegraph.

330400  article “A. E. Coppard” (The Bookman Gallery) · The Bookman, p. 21.

330401  review A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas. “A Cosmological Synthesis” · The Saturday Review, p. 318.

330415  review Humbert Wolfe,, Reverie of Policeman. “A Ballet in Poetry” · The Saturday Review, p. 367.

330430  review Alexander Goldenweiser, History, Psychology and Culture. “Psychology of Culture” · The Sunday Times, p. 8.

330505  review Christopher Hollis, Dryden. “Many-Sided John Dryden” · The Daily Telegraph.

330513  review Walter de la Mare, The Fleeting and Other Poems; Archibald Macleish, Conquistador; Robert Graves, Poems: 1930-1933; Collected Poems of Harold Monro; E. E. Stopford, the Slaves of Rose Hall; Stephen Vincent Benét, Ballads and Poems. “Recent Poetry” · The Saturday Review, p. 463.

330527  review Aspects of Seventheenth-Century Verse, ed. Peter Quennell. “The Perfect Anthology” · The Saturday Review, p. 518.

330610  review Huw Menai, Back in the Return, and Other Poems; The Complete Works of Walter Savage Landor: Poems, vols. I & II; Sacheverell Sitwell, Canons of Giant Art; John Gawsworth, Poems: 1930-1932. “Nature and Art in Poetry” · The Saturday Review, p. 570.

330617  review A. E. Housman, Name and Nature of Poetry. “The Fountain of Inspiration” · The Saturday Review, pp. 600-601.

330700  review Grace Ellison, Yugoslavia, The Bookman, p. 216.

330701  review Robert Neumann, Passion; Alma Karlin, The Odyssey of a Lonely Woman; Edward Dean Sullivan, This Kidnapping Business. “Three Social Problems” · The New Statesman and Nation, p. 24-26.

330826  review The Oriental Caravans, ed. Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah. “An Asiatic Omnibus” · The Saturday Review, p. 231.

331028  review J. Middleton Murry, William Blake. “A Mystic among the Poets: Blake’s Everlasting Gospel” · The Saturday Review, p. 446.

331100  poem “The Boy” · Frontier and Midland (US), p. 6.

331126  letter “Peter Pan” · The Sunday Times, p. 14.

340217  review T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism; John Sparrow, Sense and Poetry; Charles Williams, Reason and Beauty in the Poetic Mind. “In Pursuit of Psyche” · The Saturday Review, p. 190.

340224  review John Macmurray, The Philosophy of Communism; Nicholas Berdyaev, The End of Our Time and Christianity and Class War. “Christianity and Communism: The Naughty Boys of History’ · The Satturday Review, p. 214.

340300  review R. H. Mottram, East Anglia. “England’s Eastern Province” · The English Review^,5 pp. 376-377.

340300  story “The Ghost of Mr. Brown” · The English Review, pp. 291-312.

340310  review E. V. Lucas, At the Shrine of St. Charles; A. D. Ward, The Frolic and the Gentle. “The Pastures of Elia” · The Saturday Review, p. 271.

340331  review W. J. Turner, Jack and Jill; Nathaniel E. Benson, Dollard; “The Finer Shades of Poetry” · The Saturday Review, p. 356.

340400  review H. E. Bates, The Woman with Imagination · The Bookman, p. 66.

340406  letter “Applause in the Theatre” · The Daily Telegraph.

340421  review E. V. Lucas & Prudence Lucas, From Olympus to the Styx. ‘Greece and Rome” · The Saturday Review, p. 448.

340602  review Vernon Rendall, Wild Flowers in Literature. “An Anthology of Gardens” · The Saturday Review, p. 641.

340623  review J. B. Priestley, English Journey. “The Amenities of England” · The Saturday Review, p. 734.

340700  review Paul Claudel, Ways and Crossways · The Criterion XIII, No. 53, 678-679.

340700  review Edmund Blunden, The Mind’s Eye. “Mr. Blunden in Peace and War” · The English Review, p. 117.

340703  letter “The Musical Cock-Tail” · The Daily Telegraph.

340721  review Vincent Starrett, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. “The Man of Mystery” · The Saturday Review, p. 864.

340729  poem “The Cool of the Day” · The Sunday Times, p. 13.

340825  review Edmund Blunden & Earl Leslie Griggs, Coleridge. “A Metaphysical Poet” · The Saturday Review, p. 22.

340908  review Ford Madox Ford, Return to Yesterday. “The Bird Which Has Flown” · The Saturday Review, p. 86.

341000  article “Will the King Come Back?” · The Saturday Review, pp. 401-409.

341013  letter on “outworn beliefs” · New Statesman & Nation, p. 468.

341100  poem “Twilight” · The Cornhill Magazine, p. 536.

341104  letter “The One-Act Play” · The Sunday Times, p. 16.

341209  review fourteen boys’ books, by various authors. “Boys in Quest of Excitement” · The Sunday Times.

350000  BOOK Wolsey. Great Lives series. London: Duckworth.

350400  article “Religion in Modern Literature” · The Contemporary Review, p. 462-470.

350518  article “ Sir Thomas More: The End of an Age. A Scholar Drawn into Political Life” · The Daily Telegraph.

350900  poem “The Exile” · The English Review, p. 306.

350900  poem “The Leper” · The English Review, p. 347.

350908  letter “Theatre v. Cinema” · The Sunday Times.

351100  review Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion. “A Jesuit Martyr” · The London Mercury, pp. 79-80.

351201  review ten “sea-stories”, by various authors. “Adventures on the High Seas: Treasure-seekers and Others” · The Sunday Times.

360000  article “The Market for Poetry” · The Writers & Artists Yearbook, pp. 226-227.

360100  article “The Resurrection of Donne” · The London Mercury, pp. 307-314.

360200  review L. Prestige, The Life of Charles Gore. “Charles Gore” · The London Mercury, p. 46.

360400  article “The Logic of Birth Control” · Theology, pp. 220-228.

360500  article “The Doctrine of the Fall” · The Contemporary Review, pp. 605-612.

360600  story “Amen” · The English Review, pp. 634-643.

360700  letter “A Critical note on ‘The Logic of Birth Control’ Criticized” · Theology, pp. 48-49.

360700  review Nicholas Baerdyaev [sic], The Meaning of History. “Religion through the Ages” · The London Mercury, p. 278.

360800  review L. E. Elliott-Binns, Religion in the Victorian Age. “Religion in the Victorian Age” · The London Mercury, p. 372.

361200  review W. R. Inge, Freedom Love and Truth. “Dr. Inge’s Anthology” · The London Mercury,⁶ p. 221.

361206  review eleven boys’ books, by various authors · The Sunday Times.

370117  review Algernon Cecil, Portrait of Thomas More: Scholar, Statesman, Saint. “Thomas More and His Age: Statesman and Saint” · The Sunday Times.

370200  article “Trollope in the 20th century” · The London Mercury, pp. 371-378.

370418  letter “The Country Post” · The Sunday Times.

370500  letter “The Bishops and Marriage” · Theology, p. 297-280.

370500  review Nicholas Baerdyaev [sic], The Destiny of Man. “The Meaning of Life” · The London Mercury, p. 98.

370800  review Conrad Noel, The Life of Jesus. “Christ as Human Teacher” · The London Mercury, pp. 395-396.

370828  letter “History of Christian Thought” · Times Literary Supplement.

371200  review Hilaire Belloc, Characters of the Reformation. “A Reformation Portrait Gallery” · Theology, pp. 364-366.

380109  letter “The Oldest Detective Story · The Sunday Times.

380400  review Jack Lindsay, John Bunyan: Maker of Myths · The Criterion XVII, No. 68, 573-574.

380531  letter “English in the Syllabus: Are Public Schools Neglecting It?” · The Daily Telegraph.”

380600  article “The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven” · The Contemporary Review, pp. 734-740.

380600  article “The Pentecostal Gift” · Theology, pp. 341-348.

380600  review Monsignor Fontenelle, His Holiness Pope Pius XI. “The Pope” · The London Mercury, pp. 79.

380612  letter “Sleep in Summer” · The Sunday Times.

380900  article “The Resurrection of the Body” · Theology, pp. 160-167.

380900  letter “Outside the Church” · Theology, p. 176.

390123  letter “Theatre Bad Manners” · The Daily Telegraph.

390300  review H. W. Nevinson, Films of Time. “Mr. Nevinson and History” · The London Mercury, pp. 559-560.

390319  letter “The Funeral March” · The Sunday Times, p. 16.

390400  review Louis Macneice, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay · Theology, pp. 302-304.

390600  review The Family Reunion, by T. S. Eliot · Theology, pp. 455-456.

390726  letter “Novels on the Film” · The Daily Telegraph.

390800  review James Joyce, Finnagan’s [sic] Wake · Theology, pp. 157-158.

390827  letter “Postage Coupons” · The Sunday Times.

390900  article “Swift and the Modern Mind” · Theology, pp. 201-210.

391001  letter “Armistice Day” · The Sunday Times.

391100  review Michael Fraenkel, Death Is Not Enough · Theology, pp. 397-398.

391200  review Naomi Mitchison, The Blood of the Martyrs · Theology, pp. 476-477.

400100  review Bernard Walke, Plays from St. Hilary · Theology, p. 80.

400000  BOOK (ed.) This War & Christian Ethics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

400000  BOOK (ed.) Famous English Sermons. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons.

400000  BOOK (ed.) The Psychologist Turns to God. London: Dacre Press.

400200  review Tertius, The Chronicle of Brother Wolfe; Marie Rene Bazin, My Sisters Pass By · Theology, p. 159.

400312  letter “German Measles” · The Daily Telegraph.

400400  essay “Periodicals in War-Time” · Theology, p. 297-299.

400600  review A. H. Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud · Christendom, pp. 140-141.

400600  review Two Knights, by Edward Rockcliff · Theology, p. 473.

400600  review Ben Jonson, by Gerald H. Rendall · Theology, p. 473-474.

400603  article “ Hardy & England’s Wars” · The Daily Telegraph.

400700  article “The Eroica Symphony” · The Contemporary Review, pp. 79-85.

400811  letter “The Malvern Festival” · The Sunday Times.

400900  review The Oxford Book of Christian Verse, ed. David Cecil · Theology, p. 188-189.

401100  review Robert Ardrey, Thunder Rock. “The Light House in London” · Theology, pp. 301-302.

400906  letter “Higher Fares” · The Daily Telegraph.

410000  BOOK (ed.) The Ghost of Mr. Brown. London: The Fortune Press.

410300  letter on the incomes of the clergy · Theology, pp.178-179.

410400  article “The Religious Short Story” · Theology, pp. 224-228.

410500  review The Collected Poems of Alice Meynell · Theology, pp. 311-313.

410700  review Louis Macneice, The Poetry of Yeats · Theology, pp. 57-69.

411000  letter “Reprisals” · Theology, p. 241.

411100  review Henryk Sienkievicz, Quo Vadis? · Theology, pp. 296-299.

411200  poem “Behold the Man” · Poetry, p. 125.

420000  BOOK (ed.) From the Ashes: Poems. London: Williams and Norgate.

420300  article “The Moral Influence of Literature” · Theology, pp. 154-161.

420400  poem “Wood” · Poetry Quarterly, p. 30.

420700 poem “The Confessor” · Poetry Quarterly, p. 64.

420900  article “The Miraculous in Religion” · The Contemporary Review, pp. 169-174.

420900  article “The Christian Positive” · Christendom, p. 168-171.

430500  poem “Redemption by Blood” · Spirit: A Magazine of Poetry, p. 52.

430600  article “The Father of Lies” · Christendom, pp. 50-51.

440300  poem Concert · Spirit: A Magazine of Poetry, p. 20.

440800  letter “The Constitutional Monarch” · Theology, pp. 185-186.

441200  article “The Backward Glance” · Christendom, pp. 246-247.

441200  article “G. K. C.” · Theology, pp. 271-274.

450100  review Franz Werfel, Paul Among the Jews; Fred Marneau, Three Poems; Philip J. Lamb, Sons of Adam; Fred Marneau, The Wounds of the Apostles · Theology, pp. 21-22.

450200  review Norman Nicholson, The Fire of the Lord · Theology, pp. 46-47.

450700  review Emly Williams, The Wind of Heaven (play) · Theology, pp. 157-158.

450900  poem “Enemy in the Gates” · Poetry, p. 311.

451000  review Charles Williams, The House of the Octopus · Theology, pp. 238-239.

451100  letter “The Bishops and the War” · Theology, pp. 250-251.

451200  article “A Poet of Gentle Depths” (on Christina Rossetti) · Theology, pp. 268-272.

460100  letter “The Bishops and the War” · Theology, p. 18.

460117  letter “Funeral Marches” · The Times.

460500  poem “The Requiem Mass” · Spirit: A Magazine of Poetry, p. 40.

460907  letter “ Thomas Raikes” · Times Literary Supplement.

461004  article “C. S. Lewis: The Crusading Intellect” (An Anglican Portrait Gallery, No. 1) · Church of England Newspaper.

461100  review Neville Watts, The Vision Splendid · Theology, pp. 352-351.

470100  review François Mauriac, A Woman of the Pharisees · Theology, pp. 34-35.

470300  article “The Parables as Literature” · Theology, pp. 96-99.

470500  review Robert Sencourt, The Consecration of Genius · Theology, pp.194-195.

480000  BOOK (ed.) The Englishman’s Religion: An Anthology. London: George Allen & Unwin.

510131  article “The Archbishop of Canterbury: A Far-seeing and Discerning Prelate” · The Bush Brother (Australia), pp. 8-9 (reprinted from an unspecified issue of Church Standard, the Church of England newspaper of Australia since 1912, renamed The Anglican in 1952).

 

BBC radio⁷

420000  Talk to the Forces on The Englishman’s Religion 1942 (mentioned in the Preface to the 1948 Anthology of that title edited by Sampson).

430703  “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”; BBC Home Service, Saturday Night Theatre, 3 July 1943, 9.30–10.25 pm. (Sherlock Holmes: Arthur Wontner, Dr. Watson: Carleton Hobbs).

470521  “The Mezzotint” (ghost story by M. R. James), adapted by Ashley Sampson and produced by John Richmond; BBC’s Wednesday Matinee, 21 May 1947.

 

Dubious or insufficiently identified

350000  Preparatory English Grammar. Adapted from Nesfield’s “Outline of English Grammar” Macmillan, London 1935.⁸

460000  “Bird in Hand”, The New English Review, vol. 12, 1946, 55-…

470000  “Psychological Types of Music”, Contemporary Review, January 1947.

 

 

 

  4.  Sampson’s writings: Specimens related to C. S. Lewis

 

Blurb for The Problem of Pain (1940)⁹

It may be said, without much fear of contradiction, that the problem of pain – in nature and humanity – constitutes the most dramatic challenge to the truth of Christianity that the mind of man has ever devised or his heart ever experienced. Atheists and agnostics have used it to no little purpose, and the popular “tub-thumper” has cried it through the centuries; but, most important of all, the sensitive Christian has always thought that here, if anywhere, lies the final contradiction in the very heart of his faith.

The author has felt this problem acutely; but here he succeeds in answering it in a manner that is as dramatic and challenging as the problem itself. As author of The Pilgrim’s Regress and an important novel of recent times, Mr. Lewis is known to the world of literature as well as to the world of thought; and he brings to his task the writer’s imagination as well as the thinker’s logic. He feels the immensity of the problem and the almost crushing weight which it throws against orthodox Christianity in its uncompromising doctrine of a God of Love; and his argument really sheds some light into a dark and perplexing corner of theology that has been too often ignored by those who have been conscious of its magnitude.

 

 

Fragment from the Introduction to Famous English Sermons (1940)¹⁰

THE SERMON has never been given its rightful place in our heritage of English literature; and when we remember Donne, Jeremy Taylor, Joseph Butler, and Newman, we may well ask why. For it is as though the literature of religion were disqualified as such. Most of the literature of the Middle Ages is regarded as literature before it is considered as religious apologetics, while the Utopia of Thomas More (though originally in Latin), the Religio Medici, the devotional poetry of the seventeenth century, and even the Homilies of Bede, are treasured as literature before anything else. Perhaps it is because of our English shyness that the sermon has not shared this honour − a feeling that the sermon, like one’s neighbour’s morals, is a fugitive problem − something far too intimate and private for the prying eye of the professional critic. The Bible is different. That is public property − the fruit of a national mind; but sermons are too mixed up with particular circumstances and individual reactions to admit of general criticism.

That, I suppose, is a fair summary of the layman’s attitude; and yet, once committed to print (or even to ink) the sermon is literature. This does not mean that a good sermon is a good work of prose; but it does mean that the sermon is a work of prose − a thing to be read as well as heard − subject to all the possibilities and potentialities of prose, and consequently vulnerable to literary criticism. I think it may be said of the sermon what Burnet once said of Charles the Second − that he ‘had little or no literature, but true and sound sense, and a right notion of style.’ It would certainly surprise some readers to know how radically that cynical monarch transformed the English sermon of his day by changing the shambling and interminable harangues of the puritan preachers into a bold and effective pulpit oratory.

Nevertheless it is a common failing to suppose that preaching as an art was never understood in England before the Reformation. Not much has come down to us of pulpit literature in the Middle Ages, and most of what has survived is in Latin; but much of it was preached in a direct, racy style; and the preacher in ‘Merrie England’ possessed this advantage over the preachers of our modern England − that he had all his Black Sheep under his eye. Where a preacher of the twentieth century has to cast his net wide in the vague hope of catching some renegade, his early predecessor could score some direct hits without raising his voice very high! It was a temptation that could not, even if it should, be resisted; and no anthology of English sermons which claims to be thoroughly representative can afford entirely to ignore the Middle Ages.

            ...

... [T]he preacher wields a weapon that may or may not be effective in two forms. There are voices which in these days come to us effectively over the air whose message is never quite the same when it is reborn into the cold light of print; but there are others who reach the heart and the mind as well through the eye as through the ear. It is my own conviction that those whom I have chosen shall be represented in this volume can stand the test of both. Some are voices that have come to us by the written word through many ages − testifying to the deathlessness of their message; and the others are, I truly believe, in the same tradition of prophecy.

This note of prophecy applies in a special sense to the last sermon in the book. For Europe would seem to have entered upon a new phase of her history − in which there is little else but darkness to be seen as yet. Nevertheless it is a part of the prophet’s function to detect whatever gleam of light there may be ahead, and Mr. C. S. Lewis, in his sermon preached before the University of Oxford early in the Lent Term, 1939, has put out a feeler for that light which is all that we can see as yet of the world that is ahead of us − the hope of Christian culture. Mr. Lewis is a Fellow of Magdalen College and a young novelist of some distinction; and the inclusion of his sermon in this varied anthology, preached at a dramatic moment in the world’s history, would seem to form a fitting climax to a book of Famous Sermons.

 

 

“The Father of Lies”

Christendom: A Journal of Christian Sociology Vol. 13, No. 50, June 1943, pp. 50-51.

Nobody has ever attempted a comic history of the Devil; and yet if there is any truth in the dictum of Sir Thomas More that the Devil cannot bear to be mocked, such a history may serve a more than human purpose – and it could be written. For nothing is more comic than the Devil’s strategy – his game of playing the popular hero just long enough to escape detection, of joining in the hunt for himself all down the ages; and of playing the priest, the pacifist or the persecutor, according to plan; and then, as we awaken to the horror of it all, flying off to laugh at us all from some new place of concealment. His dodge of getting Nero, Hitler, Bonaparte or Borgia mistaken for him, is almost too simple to need stating. For it means that he can do a roaring trade in souls among all those who are sufficiently naive as to suppose that in fighting against them they are fighting against him. He can even join in the fight then and make fairly sure that they will use his methods!

He has been known to delude whole peoples in this way. There was, for instance, that ugly blot on Christian history which smeared it for a thousand years when scares of witchcraft scoured the continent. Not that there was anything wrong in executing witches, as Mr. C. S. Lewis has said, ‘if we really thought there were people going about who had sold themselves to the Devil and had received supernatural powers from him in return and were using those powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather; surely we’d all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, these filthy quislings did’;¹¹ but the whole monstrosity was, of course, a gigantic hoax, big enough to include the whole civilised world and to endure for at least a thousand years. That was one of the Devil’s masterpieces; and, all the time those unhappy peasants were being drowned or burned for doing his work, he was hunting with the hounds; and had sedulously victimised their persecutors. Of course there is a danger here – a danger which the Devil has been anxious to exploit – of thinking that, because the Church was compromised by this evil for so long, the Church was itself an invention of the Devil. For the Devil does not seem to invent things but only to inhabit them when they are sufficiently respectable and sufficiently advanced for his presence to be overlooked in them.

It is, however, a mistake to suppose that he has only broadcast his seed in the past. There is probably nothing that delights him more than the enlightened materialism of our own age which refuses to acknowledge his existence. For this promises a plentiful field for his sowing with the probability of a rich harvest in souls. Here he can gain a permanent hiding place in the heart and mind of the most high-souled atheist without arousing any suspicion; and, of course, the problem of belief in him is a rather baffling one. The thing is dark and thorny and bristling with difficulties; but what shouts at us all down the ages, if we are at all sensitive or at all realist, is that something has gone seriously amok with the world if it was made by a good Creator; and that something seems to have tampered with the universe. Evil is never indulged in for its own sake; but only as a means to power or pleasure or the avoidance of pain – none of which is an evil in itself; and one has but to review human sin, in all its multitudinous complexity, to realise that it becomes explicable as such only in terms of good; and that the man who was bad for the sake of being bad just never did and never could exist.

Then comes the bother of knowing what to do about the Devil – even when you do believe. For you cannot ignore him – except at your peril; and somehow or other he has got to be fitted into the scheme of things, and you have got to adopt some attitude towards him. You should, one supposes, quite certainly hate him, even though he was originally a creature of light and must for ever remain a creation of God; and to some of us hatred does not come easily, and the very size of the Devil makes him a difficult creature to get into emotional focus. It is easier for most of us to love God in the person of Jesus Christ than as a Father in Heaven or the Lord and Giver of Life; and, by the same Psychological law, it is easier to hate a Nero, a Hitler, a Bonaparte or a Borgia than to hate that recalcitrant Prince of Darkness who is just about so damnably dark that you can never find him until he has quitted his hiding-place!

This brings us back to the Devil’s strategy, his brilliantly clever dodge of always being where he is never looked for; and to-day it seems he can well afford (because of an almost total disbelief in him) to come forth from his lair and even at times sit enthroned in the midst of us. We must all admit that he has played his cards well; and in the lifetime of most of us he was thought to be enthroned in the Kremlin when actually he was presiding at most meetings of the League of Nations. For the Devil turned pacifist was not likely to be recognised by a Europe that hated war for most of the wrong reasons; and when, after the climax of Munich, Mr. Winston Churchill said: ‘The issues were quite clear – war or dishonour; we have chosen dishonour – we shall get war,’ he had spotted, perhaps without knowing it, the Devil’s mighty strategy. That is the way he has always worked – by hoodwinking the majority: persecuting in an age of persecutors and pacifying in an age of pacifists; and nothing, of course, can exceed the delight with which he lets us all down before he quits. It adds a little spice to his existence. For it must be trying at times to remember that, however violent and victorious is strategy, God is going to get the last word.

So if we mock the Devil for his discomfort, or ‘flout and jeer him,’ as Luther suggested, we shall be in the enviable position of those who laugh longest because they laugh last – provided, of course, we escape his clutches. For him and his angels there is no salvation because, unlike the seed of Adam, they tasted the fruit of rebellion while their eyes were open. The Devil has always had but a short time – the span of this life measured against eternity; and his zeal for souls is the measure of his wrath. It is a curious fact of history that, however despots and others have exploited humanity since the dawn of Christianity, no Princes and few Popes have tampered with eternity. No outraged King or other vanquisher would deny his victim the last rites of the Church. His soul, if possible, must be saved for eternity; but the strategy of the Devil has been otherwise. He would lose him here il he could gain him there, spare him anything for the sake of the last battle; and we have hardly begun to understand him until we realise that his hatred for his friends is even more vile and malignant than his hatred for his enemies.

 

 

“C. S. Lewis: The Crusading Intellect”¹²

Church of England Newspaper, October 4, 1946, p. 7.

 

There can be no doubt that Dr. Lewis is a phenomenon. His “arrival” among the intellectual stars at a moment when Europe had plunged into a Second World War was rather like a fairy-tale. For everything had combined to produce his opposite. The civilised world was perhaps nearer to despair than it has ever been. The hopes and promises − not to say the prayers − of mankind seemed to have gone for nothing. A vast and paralysing shadow was creeping over us from which there seemed no sure deliverance; and the prophets of Utopia were becoming the prophets of doom. One thing alone was certain − the fact that nothing, not even tomorrow, was certain. Our hopes had been changed to bitterness and men were asking themselves what God was doing when C. S. Lewis (a lay don of literary reputation who had once been a rather cynical atheist) preached a sermon in the University Church that set all Oxford, and later all England, talking. He had no anodyne to offer and made none of those startling assertions about a world that had changed overnight and was to usher in the great Utopia when the clash of arms had ceased − he seemed to be neither a pacifist nor a crusader against Nazism − neither did he foreshadow a long or a short war. No, he preached from an Old Testament text a sermon about God and the Devil − about ultimate judgment and the individual − about war in high places and the Christian’s part as a crusader in a battle that cannot cease as long as we draw breath; and of his readiness to die at a word from God in the shadow or in the sun.

 

“The Problem of Pain”

The war was not much older when The Problem of Pain appeared. One saw at first some rather startling notices about this book − notices that had a different ring about them from those which generally eulogised books concerning great ultimate problems. The trickle soon became an avalanche and The Problem of Pain, that rare bird of passage, a “theological best seller.” People whose staple literary diet was the newspaper and the latest fiction thriller bought the Problem of Pain and read it. I have heard many criticise it − even inveigh against it; but I have yet to meet the man who thought he could ignore it. For it contained no short cuts to reality − no cheap or sensational solutions to offer; but was an intellectual bomb explosion that, however devastating in its effect upon at least two hundred years of thought, turned the whole problem upside down to reveal it suddenly the right way up.

       It is, of course, inevitable that a man with such a record (and Lewis has other claims to fame than in the field of theology) should arouse some personal curiosity. “What is Lewis like?” I have often been asked. He is a bachelor in the middle forties and of North Irish descent − though you would not guess this from his appearance or his voice. His pleasantly authoritative tones − not unlike an actor’s − dome-like head and expansive manner give the impression, I think, that he is larger than is actually the case; and the feeling he exudes of delighted interest in all that you discuss with him makes him a most delightful host.

 

His Correspondence

His correspondence is fairly voluminous; and I believe he has a number of postal friends whom he has never met and is never likely to meet in this world − from all over it. “Some people treat me as a kind of Confessor,” he said to me recently; and I personally know one leading clergyman who gives all his penitents a copy of Screwtape and tells them what letter to refer to whenever they are in need of special help, or are perplexed by some moral problem. Certainly something of his personality trickles through his letters; and “glowing” is, I think, the word I should be forced to use if I were obliged to capture him in a single word.

       He will pass lightly from subject to subject − always genial and profoundly sympathetic. I have known him describe ghosts, English drama, the Russian novel, Dante, psycho-analysis, and bottled milk, in a single hour.

 

The Monotonies of Life

“I love the monotonies of life,” I heard him say once − “getting up and going to bed − looking out at the same view and meeting the same people at the same times every day. I never ‘want things to happen’. They’re always happening; and I’d rather they happened in the right order than in the wrong order. I don’t like interferences in the normal order of events; and to me the most disagreeable experience would be one that suspended normality. That’s why I am quite sure that I should be alarmed if I saw a ghost, in the same sort of way that I should be alarmed if I met a man with the head of a pig walking down the ‘High’. It would be a ghastly breach in the natural order from which the soul would recoil.”

       “But what about pleasant surprises?” I put to him. “they aren’t in your catalogue of monotonies.”

       “No − and, of course, one is delighted at them; but there’s a rich variety of surprises within the content of one’s daily doings. For instance, when I walk across from these rooms to breakfast every morning, the view is precisely the same; but the sky is a different texture nearly every day. The trees vary from month to month; and even the angle of the sun makes a difference. I welcome changes but have a strong aversion to chances. Gambling, to me, is an unattractive pastime.”

 

His Churchmanship

His churchmanship is a much more puzzling problem. For while Chesterton the Catholic has inspired him, it is George MacDonald, the Scottish Presbyterian, to whom he has turned in his maturity for constant guidance and spiritual replenishment − the hero of The Great Divorce − and from whose work he has provided a spirited anthology. For Lewis has always maintained that there is more unity than disunity among Christian Churches and that the real question is “Why are we united on so much after two thousand years?” − not “Why are we disunited?”

       He has recently finished a book on Miracles which treats the problem in a highly original manner. (I understand from his publishers that it is likely to appear in January.) For that is what makes Lewis a phenomenon − the fact that he can take an age-old problem on which whole libraries exist; but nobody has thought of presenting the solution before as Lewis presents it. His solution is like wine to their water − poetry to their prose − laughter to their rather portentous theological smiles; incredibly simple in exposition but breath-taking in its brilliance. I understand that he is not broadcasting for the present. “I’ve got to get on with my job here − which is teaching English,” he has more than once said with a smile when an editor’s ambassador has told him, in his secluded chambers at Magdalen College, of his public’s demand for “more Lewis.” Thus C. S. Lewis − the man whose theological vision has burst so strangely, and with such a wonderful allurement, on our war-torn world.

       For the sermon that he preached in St. Mary’s then and all that he has said and written since, spoken on the radio, or submitted to the colder light of print, are variations of the same theme − that theology is not just one study among many, but that all studies (history, literature, mathematics, and geography) are branches of theology. The Middle Ages knew this − likewise the world of the Reformation; but Europe lost that vision when the Age of Reason made man the measure of all things. Now she no longer harnesses her wagon to the stars − but to a bomb which sometimes looks like exploding at any moment. Dr. Lewis has endeavoured to recall us to that former state without detracting one iota from all that has been constructive in scientific discovery and philosophical thought during the intervening years. That is why he has incurred the venom of those who believed that Utopia could be built from the earth upwards and find that they were only building Babel; but that is also why ordinary men and women − the wayfaring men in their thousands − hear him and find they are shaken to the core because they feel their world is falling about them.

 

 

  5.  Walter de la Mare’s obituary for Ashley Sampson

The Report of the Royal Society of Literature, 1947, pp. 61-63.

 

ASHLEY SAMPSON, who became a Fellow of the Society in 1941, was born in Gloucester on March 5th, 1900. He died after a brief illness on January 20th of this year. He was the sixth son of the late Canon Sampson, Canon Residentiary of Truro Cathedral and, later, Vicar of New Beckenham in Kent. Always of a delicate constitution, he was for the most part educated privately. For a while he was an assistant master at Lawrence House School, St. Anne’s on Sea. In later life he engaged in many occupations connected with literature, and whether by choice or as occasion offered, always with a vitalizing interest and scrupulous care. He was an Examiner in English for the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London; “read” for several publishers; dramatised stories for the B.B.C. – one of them introducing no less exacting a personage than Sherlock Holmes, another based on Montagu James’s most unusual ghost story, “The Mezzotint.” He gave talks on the radio; constantly lectured during the War, and all over the kingdom, to the Forces; and taught English, as no doubt Mr. Churchill would have it taught, to the Naval Cadets at Dartmouth. Literature, biography, psychology – all was grist that came to his pen. He was, too, not only a keen but, according to report, a subtle amateur theologian, and excelled as editor of “The Christian Challenge Series.” He contributed a volume on Wolsey to the “Great Lives” series of biographical studies; published a novel, “The Ghost of Mr. Brown,” as indicative of his gift for fantasy as of his style; wrote one short story, in particular, dealing with childhood, of singular insight and originality, and published a collection of poems entitled “From the Ashes.” Perhaps his chief devotion, for over thirty years of a comparatively brief life, was St. Paul’s Cathedral. A fervent spirit burned in what to all appearance was a fragile lamp. Modest, serene, he had that sovereign gift, humour; and good humour; and, better even yet, unfailing good nature. Even in his earlier teens he ventured to startle the somewhat drowsy dovecot of New Beckenham with a Parish Magazine, to which, with a natural art of persuasion, he easily managed to persuade Thomas Hardy and other well-known writers to contribute – and for love. A brief life, as he probably expected, was its unmerited portion. He had outstanding moral courage, a confirmed faith and definite principles. The word “death” would not for him have been beset with shadows so dark as is often the case. He was a loyal friend, an endearing “character,” and a delightful, life-giving companion.

W. J. DE LA MARE

 

  6.  Further research

By Arend Smilde, October 2025

 

Most of Ashley Sampson’s writings listed above in section 3 can be found on the internet. A full examination of his published work might add to our understanding of the man’s precise motives for extending his fateful invitation for C. S. Lewis in 1939 to write The Problem of Pain. While I have not systematically taken up this task, my impression so far is that Lewis’s theological thought and writing must have delighted Sampson personally quite apart from expectations of commercial success. Among the pieces reproduced in section 4, and among his writings generally, Sampson’s 1943 essay “The Father of Lies” is perhaps the clearest example of Lewis’s “influence” being happily absorbed and shared out by a kindred spirit. Fleshing out the story of Ashley Sampson might result in an uncommonly interesting and, indeed, crucial piece of Lewis’s early reception history.

Regarding unpublished material, six years of intermittent study of Sampson’s status as “the ‘discoverer’ of C. S. Lewis” have left me suspecting that an account of his life substantially fuller than the one offered by Walter de la Mare (above, section 5) will require a scholar living in England and determined to hunt down every surviving document of possible interest. Archives related to mid-20th-century English persons and institutions in the world of literature, theology and the humanities, including relevant journals such as Theology, might yet yield up relevant material. One encouraging example, which came to my attention while my essay went to press, is the online collection of T. S. Eliot’s letters, already mentioned above in section 2. There are sixteen letters to Sampson, spanning the period 1929-1940 and featuring editorial notes which add to their usefulness in the present context.¹³ Among other things, we learn that Sampson not only tried and failed to engage Eliot both for the Christian Challenge Series and for the 1940 volume of essays, This War and Christian Ethics; we also learn that he tried to secure the sermon in Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral for the volume of Famous English Sermons – an idea readily approved by Eliot, but not by “the Committee of Faber & Faber”.¹⁴

Sampson appears to have remained unmarried and childless. Genealogical internet sources might give clues to tracing descendants of the other children (at least five elder sons) of his parents, Gerald Victor Sampson (1864-1928) and Amy Constance Bright (1858/9-1933). With luck, one of them might be able at least to find a photo featuring (great-)great-uncle Ashley. A note to T. S. Eliot’s letter of 30 September 1937 explains, in Sampson’s own words from an unidentified letter, why he was writing from St-Annes-on-Sea, a place mentioned in Walter de la Mare’s obituary:

“The truth is that I have found the life of a free lance rather too precarious – at least at my present stage; and have accepted a post as English Master in a preparatory school once more – under a Headmaster for whom I worked some while ago. The offer has been made me on several occasions; and I resolved to accept it at last – before tinned food and another winter, with its appalling race against bills, completely got me down!’

At some point as yet unknown before 1946 but after 1940,¹⁵ Sampson must have moved back to his old abode at 31 Harrington Gardens, London.

So far, my only unequivocal piece of evidence for Sampson’s position in the advisory board of Theology in 1939 is a single reference in Alec Vidler’s autobiography.¹⁶ Sampson’s name appears there along with four others making up the board at the start of Vidler’s 26-year career as the journal’s editor. Whether or not Sampson remained long in that position, he certainly had been, and remained, a regular contributor to the journal, writing a total of forty essays, reviews and letters from April 1936 till May 1947 – with the last two pieces published posthumously. Although Vidler in his monthly editorials occasionally noted the deaths of people related to the journal or of special interest for readers, in the months following Sampson’s death on 20 January 1947 the only sign in Theology that he had died was the conventional dagger mark prefixed to his name under his last two contributions. The Wade Center has the transcript of a “Conversational Interview” with Vidler conducted by Lyle Dorsett on 4 June 1986. It only contains one brief general remark on Lewis’s (and Charles Williams’s) work for Theology; Sampson is never mentioned.

Digital newspaper archives are an obvious source of information on Sampson’s public life and standing, including reviews of the books he published and edited. For one example, they reveal that in March 1932 he ended up “highly commended” (if not a prizeman) in a short-story competition organized by The Spectator. My overall impression so far is that Sampson by the late 1930s had made a name as a versatile and highly active minor man of letters in British society. This of course is confirmed by the obituary published by the Royal Society of Literature. Sampson’s election as a member of the Society in 1941 was a distinction that did not fall to Lewis until 1948.¹⁷

As mentioned in note 33 of my essay, one clearly definable and fascinating Sampson-related issue which also has a Lewis connection is Sampson’s late-1942 manifesto protesting against the mass bombing of civilians in Germany. It seems that Lewis, like almost all of those approached by Sampson, declined to support it with his signature. As I wanted neither to go down this road nor to neglect it, I have been fortunate to find two scholars willing to take up this topic and integrate it in a projected study of their own. I look forward to reading the result. So far, this is the only issue for which I have had access to some unpublished typescript documents from Sampson’s desk, including not only two versions of the manifesto and some specimens of Sampson’s handwriting, but an interesting remark, in a letter to Maurice Reckitt, on Lewis’s precise objection to the manifesto. It is also, dismayingly, a topic that remains only too topical in today’s world.

The nature and the duration of Sampson’s relation with Geoffrey Bles have remained largely obscure to me. Of the books that Sampson wrote or edited, none was published either by The Centenary Press or by Geoffrey Bles. In his October 1946 article, “The Crusading Intellect”, he notes with reference to Lewis’s Miracles that “I understand from his publishers that it is likely to appear in January”; yet when the book appeared in May 1947, less than four months after his death, the title page featured the usual publisher’s name – “Geoffrey Bles: The Centenary Press”. When Lewis in February 1943 advised his correspondent Sister Penelope regarding potential publishers for a book of hers, he said “Try my Mr. Bles, and then Dent” (CL2:554). Why didn’t he say “Try my Mr. Sampson”? We can only guess.

Although there can be no doubt that Bles and Sampson had a work relationship, actual evidence for details appears to be almost non-existent. Lewis mentions Sampson in the opening words of his preface to The Problem of Pain; Sampson’s name is usually stated over a list of “Christian Challenge” volumes printed on their jackets or endpapers; “Geoffrey Bles” is mentioned on their title pages along with “The Centenary Press” from 1941 or 1942 onward; WorldCat presents many Centenary books as Bles books from 1935 on; Bles and The Centenary Press had the same business address at least from the early 1930s on and seem to have made their various subsequent moves in tandem. But this is all. So far as I can see at present, all further and more specific details about Sampson’s arrangements with and work for Bles must remain a matter of speculation. It might have been different if Green and Hooper had stated their sources.

Given this grave lack of details, it seems perfectly possible that Geoffrey Bles took charge of the Lewis connection soon after The Problem of Pain had proved a success while Sampson’s work for Bles got confined to the Christian Challenge Series and all but ceased at some point during the war years. This would help to explain why Lewis in 1943 referred to “My Mr. Bles”; why his Christian Behaviour (April 1943) and Beyond Personality (September 1944) sport the single name “Geoffrey Bles” on their jackets although the first volume of radio talks, Broadcast Talks (July 1942), still had the combined Bles/Centenary name;¹⁸ and why Walter de la Mare in 1947 mentioned neither Bles nor the Centenary Press, but only the Christian Challenge Series. It may be true that Sampson secured The Screwtape Letters for Bles in 1941, as Green and Hooper tell us. However, given the evident pieces of speculation and the lack of stated documentation in their account and its later developments, I think we cannot take even this for granted.

As for the Christian Challenge series, Geoffrey Bles in 1946 was clearly still hoping to keep it flying, and Sampson’s name with it, as witness advertisements in The Times Literary Supplement (17 August) and The Times (22 August). Under a general endorsement (“A series of the greatest possible value”) from the late Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, they announce revised editions of four pre-war titles which had been “destroyed by enemy action” during the war, adding a list of nine later volumes topped by Lewis’s The Problem of Pain. Perhaps the idea was that Sampson or someone else might publish further volumes. But Sampson died within half a year from these advertisements, and no new volumes appeared after 1945.

Finally, it seems we cannot as yet be sure that Sampson ever stated a “purpose” for the Christian Challenge series such as Hooper first mentioned in 1996 – “introducing the Christian faith to people outside the Church”. A book notice in The Times Literary Supplement of 19 September 1936 announced that

The first three volumes are about to be published by the Unicorn Press of a new group of books under the heading “The Christian Challenge” series, designed with the object of bringing the best thought and scholarship on the Christian side into the hands of the average layman. The series is being edited by Mr. Ashley Sampson.

While this information might reflect the “prospectus” that caused T. S. Eliot to congratulate Sampson in January 1936, nothing of the sort seems to have come to the desk of the reviewer for Theology of the first three volumes:

It is a pity … that there is not some General Introduction to define the purpose of the Series. The rather fulsome ‘puffs’ on the jackets are a poor substitute.¹⁹

Presumably these “puffs” include the endorsement by Walter Matthews (quoted on page 212 of my essay) which might be the real origin of Hooper’s words. So far, the nearest thing to a statement of Sampson’s purpose seems to be available from a note to T. S. Eliot’s letter of 31 May 1937 to Sampson. Quoting Sampson’s words from a letter of 19 May, the editor notes:

Sampson wanted to widen the appeal of the “Christian Challenge” series he was editing. “For it is my aim, as the Series is so largely addressed to the laity, to include among its contributors a certain proportion of laymen who are not known in ecclesiastical circles; but who can write with authority upon such problems as Censorship, Culture, Revolution and the place of religion in Art. R. L. Mégroz, Rayner Heppenstall, Edward O’Brien and Osbert Burdett, are the kind of people I have in mind. The publishers suggest that as the series has built up a certain public which may not know much about these people, the sales of their books may suffer; but my retort is that they may succeed in getting the series known to a wider circle of readers. Anything that you may say on the matter will, of course, be treated in the strictest confidence by us.’

In light of my essay, it is hardly surprising that neither Sampson nor Eliot was at this stage thinking of C. S. Lewis as a likely author;²⁰ in fact the point to take here is, first, that the purpose of the series seems rather undefined, or at least susceptible to change; and second, that Sampson describes the intended readers not as “people outside the church” but as “the laity” – hardly different from the “average layman” of the TLS book notice. “The publishers” referred to by Sampson were undoubtedly the people in charge of the Unicorn Press.²¹ Perhaps their difference over Sampson’s proposed policy change helped to force a decision to transfer the series to Geoffrey Bles and the Centenary Press. Of course Hooper and TLS may each have been using sources we don’t know, such as the “prospectus” received by T. S. Eliot in January 1936 and mentioned also in an advertisement of early 1940.²² But then, just as likely, Hooper and TLS may each have been paraphrasing one and the same “puff”, viz. the endorsement by Walter Matthews.

For those seeking clarity and details on Sampson’s work relation with Bles, the absence of company archives prior to 1952 is likely to prove a serious problem.