Essential Novelists Charles Williams

Author : Thomas Howard
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1592448461
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Novels of Charles Williams written by Thomas Howard and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2004-09-14 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fanciful novels of Charles Williams have long fascinated a rather elite reading public - T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, and C.S. Lewis, for example, were among his great admirers. But those books - which include 'The Place of the Lion', 'Descent into Hell', and 'All Hallows' Eve' - are also dense and perplexing, and even the writer's fondest devotees have found the meanings of his fiction elusive. Here at last is a clear and informed guide to the complexities and rich rewards of Charles Williams' novels. As Thomas Howard notes, Williams' tales might best be described as metaphysical thrillers, in which Williams used occult machinery in much the same way that Conrad used exotic locales and Joyce used the subconscious: to vivify human experience and awaken readers to its range and possibilities. One tale might feature a chase for the Holy Grail across Hertfordshire fields, while in another the picture may switch with no apology at all from a policeman at a crossroad to the Byzantine Emperor. As Howard lucidly demonstrates, the controlling factor behind Williams' work is an essentially Christian worldview in which heaven and hell seem to lurk under every bush and the constant theme is order versus disintegration. Concentrating on Williams' novels, Howard brilliantly illuminates the major concerns that informed all of Williams' thinking. Howard also considers Williams' work in the context of modern fictional practice and assesses its place in the tradition of the English language novel.

Author : Charles Williams
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504006631
Total Pages : 174 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Descent into Hell written by Charles Williams and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative, classic metaphysical thriller, a group of suburban amateur actors plagued by personal demons and terrors explore the pathways to heaven and hell Certain inhabitants of Battle Hill, a small community on the outskirts of London, are preparing to mount a new play by the neighborhood’s most illustrious resident, the writer Peter Stanhope. Each actor struggles with self-absorption, doubt, fear, and sin. But “the Hill” is not like other places. Here the past and present intermingle, ghosts walk among the living, and reality is often clouded by dreams and the dark fantastic. For young Pauline Anstruther, who is caring for an aging grandmother and frightened by the specter of a doppelgänger who gets closer with each visitation, the prospect of heaven exists in the renowned playwright’s willingness to bear the burden of her terror. For eminent historian Lawrence Wentworth, the rejection of his desire pulls him deeper inside himself, leaving him vulnerable to the lure of the succubus and opening wide the entrance to hell. A brilliant theological thriller, Descent into Hell is an extraordinary fictional meditation on sin and personal salvation by one of the twentieth century’s most original and provocative literary artists. Charles Williams, a member of the Inklings alongside fellow Oxfordians C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Owen Barfield, has written a powerful work at once profoundly disturbing and gloriously uplifting, an ingenious amalgam of metaphysics, religious thought, and darkest fantasy.

Author : Grevel Lindop
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191063126
Total Pages : 516 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Charles Williams written by Grevel Lindop and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first full biography of Charles Williams (1886-1945), an extraordinary and controversial figure who was a central member of the Inklings—the group of Oxford writers that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Charles Williams—novelist, poet, theologian, magician and guru—was the strangest, most multi-talented, and most controversial member of the group. He was a pioneering fantasy writer, who still has a cult following. C.S. Lewis thought his poems on King Arthur and the Holy Grail were among the best poetry of the twentieth century for 'the soaring and gorgeous novelty of their technique, and their profound wisdom'. But Williams was full of contradictions. An influential theologian, Williams was also deeply involved in the occult, experimenting extensively with magic, practising erotically-tinged rituals, and acquiring a following of devoted disciples. Membership of the Inklings, whom he joined at the outbreak of the Second World War, was only the final phase in a remarkable career. From a poor background in working-class London, Charles Williams rose to become an influential publisher, a successful dramatist, and an innovative literary critic. His friends and admirers included T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and the young Philip Larkin. A charismatic personality, he held left-wing political views, and believed that the Christian churches had dangerously undervalued sexuality. To redress the balance, he developed a 'Romantic Theology', aiming at an approach to God through sexual love. He became the most admired lecturer in wartime Oxford, influencing a generation of young writers before dying suddenly at the height of his powers. This biography draws on a wealth of documents, letters and private papers, many never before opened to researchers, and on more than twenty interviews with people who knew Williams. It vividly recreates the bizarre and dramatic life of this strange, uneasy genius, of whom Eliot wrote, 'For him there was no frontier between the material and the spiritual world.'

Author : Charles Williams
Publisher : Tacet Books
ISBN 13 : 3968583027
Total Pages : 526 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Essential Novelists - Charles Williams written by Charles Williams and published by Tacet Books. This book was released on 2020-05-09 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to the Essential Novelists book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors. For this book, the literary critic August Nemo has chosen the two most important and meaningful novels of Charles Williams wich are War in Heaven and Shadows of Ecstasy. Charles Williams was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian, literary critic, and member of the literary enthusiasts group Inklings. Novels selected for this book: - War in Heaven. - Shadows of Ecstasy.This is one of many books in the series Essential Novelists. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the authors.

Author : Charles Williams
Publisher : Overamstel Uitgevers
ISBN 13 : 9049983758
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Touch of Death written by Charles Williams and published by Overamstel Uitgevers. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The score would be an easy one—if it weren’t for the women involved Out of work and dead broke, Lee Scarborough is a long way from his days as a football hero when he meets the sunbathing Diana James—an innocent-looking creature with a plan to make a fortune. A few months’ back, her lover embezzled $120,000 from a bank, but disappeared before she could get her hands on the cash. The police think he’s fled the state, but Diana is sure he’s dead, and knows who killed him: his wife, Madelon Butler, a sadistic drunk who is capable of anything. The cash is inside Madelon’s house, waiting to be stolen a third time, and all Diana needs is a patsy. Scarborough fits the bill. The plan sails along smoothly until Scarborough meets Mrs. Butler. By the time his luck runs out, he’d rather face a dozen hulking linebackers than these two beauties, who have been driven to a frenzy by jealousy, greed, and lust.

Author : Charles Williams
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504006666
Total Pages : 167 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Place of the Lion written by Charles Williams and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One man must save the human race from total destruction when a small British village is invaded by a terrifying host of archetypal creatures released from the spiritual world In the small English town of Smetham on the outskirts of London, a wall separating two worlds has broken down. The meddling and meditations of a local mage, Mr. Berringer, has caused a rift in the barrier between the corporeal and the spiritual, and now all hell has broken loose. Strange creatures are descending on Smethem—terrifying supernatural archetypes wreaking wholesale havoc, destruction, and death. Some residents, like the evil, power-hungry Mr. Foster, welcome the horrific onslaught. Others, like the cool and intellectual Damaris, refuse to accept what her eyes and heart tell her until it is far too late. Only a student named Anthony, emboldened by his unwavering love for Damaris, has the courage to face the horror head on. But if he alone cannot somehow restore balance to the worlds, all of humankind will surely perish in the impending apocalypse. An extraordinary metaphysical fantasy firmly based in Platonic ideals, The Place of the Lion is a masterful blending of action and thought by arguably the most provocative of the University of Oxford’s renowned Inklings—the society of writers in the 1930s that included such notables as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Owen Barfield. With unparalleled imagination, literary skill, and intelligence, the remarkable Charles Williams has created a truly unique thriller, a tour de force of the fantastic that masterfully engages the mind, heart, and spirit.

Author : Alice Mary Hadfield
Publisher : New York : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Charles Williams written by Alice Mary Hadfield and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A biography of the British editor, critic, poet, novelist, dramatist, and theologian describes his influence on Auden, Lewis, Sayers, Eliot, and Tolkien".

Author : Charles Williams
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 150400664X
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Many Dimensions written by Charles Williams and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ancient stone possessing awesome and terrifying powers wreaks havoc in this intelligent and provocative literary excursion into the supernatural A remarkable object has fallen into the hands of the abominable scientist Sir Giles Tumulty. Once positioned at the center of the crown of King Solomon, it is a stone of astonishing and terrifying power, capable of good and evil alike. Anyone who touches it can move through time and space, perform miracles, and heal or kill. The stone can replicate itself, and does so during the course of Sir Giles’s inhuman experiments, subsequently falling into numerous unworthy hands throughout England. There are those who will attempt to use the stone for personal gain, only to discover that it is they themselves being used by a power beyond their comprehension; some will find themselves trapped in eternally repeating nightmares from which there is no escape; still others will be freed from their earthly burdens. And so begins the battle between the forces of darkness and light for control of the most dangerous object in existence. A gripping metaphysical thriller by Charles Williams, who along with C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and J. R. R. Tolkien was one of Oxford’s famed Inklings, Many Dimensions is at once a gripping supernatural adventure and a thought-provoking exploration of the good and evil that dwell in the heart of every human being.

Author : Charles Williams
Publisher : Overamstel Uitgevers
ISBN 13 : 9049983642
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dead Calm written by Charles Williams and published by Overamstel Uitgevers. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the open waters of the Pacific, a couple encounters a stranded madman Rae and Ingram are nineteen days out of the Panama Canal, sailing slowly across the wide, flat Pacific on the Saracen, when they find Hughie Warriner in his dinghy. He was on a pleasure cruise in his yacht, the Orpheus, he says, when food poisoning killed his passengers and his ship began to sink. After an alleged ten days of desperately fighting to stay afloat he spied the Saracen, and rowed to his salvation. Finding the stranded yacht, against Warriner’s wishes, Ingram boards the stranded Orpheus. There he finds Warriner’s passengers—very much alive, and hungry for revenge against the man who attacked them and left them to drown. Ingram tries to get back to his ship, but is too late. Warriner escapes with his yacht, taking Rae hostage, and Ingram hasno means to save them but tattered sails, a sinking ship, and rage that burns hotter than the merciless Pacific sun.

Author : Charles Williams
Publisher : Overamstel Uitgevers
ISBN 13 : 9049983715
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Hot Spot written by Charles Williams and published by Overamstel Uitgevers. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Madox, a dull town, a beautiful woman, and an easy bank heist spell doom In a town so small that Main Street is only three blocks long, there isn’t a lot to do—other than work, ogle women, and think about fast ways to get rich. After a year of aimless wandering, Madox has landed here, nearly broke and with no prospects but a dead-end job selling cars to yokels. Until one afternoon a fire at the burger joint draws the attention of everyone in town—including the men who are supposed to be guarding the bank. It’s almost too good to be true, but there it is—$15,000 lying around, watched by no one. Now all Madox needs is a little nerve and a second distraction. And while one woman will give him the nerve, another will make him ready to kill.