by C. S. Lewis . . .
THE
SCREWTAPE
LETTERS
Dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien
Joel D. Heck
SEPTEMBER 8, 1947 COVER OF TIME MAGAZINE
“THE INNER RING”
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Address at King’s College, University of London,
on Dec. 14, 1944:
 “The
Devil I shall leave strictly alone. The
association between him and me in the public mind
has already gone quite as deep as I wish…”
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The Genesis of Screwtape
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In 1916, Lewis read Letters from Hell (1866) by Danish author
Valdemar Adolph Thisted.
Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman (1922), Stephen McKenna
A letter to his brother Warren, July 20, 1940
First title: From One Devil to Another
Thirty-one serialized letters in The Guardian, 1941
Lewis once said of David Lindsay’s use of names in A Voyage to
Arcturus, “perhaps Screwtape owes something to them” (Collected
Letters, II, 753).
Paid about $1,500 for the letters
Royalties went to the Agape Fund for helping the poor, particularly
clergy widows
Ashley Sampson and Geoffrey Bles
Historical Context
Like Mere Christianity . . .
 During World War Two
 “The Battle of Britain History Site”:
 www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/bobhome.html
 “The Battle of Britain”:
 www.battleofbritain.net
 Hmmm . . . Mere Christianity, The Screwtape
Letters, and Narnia, all born in the war!
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GENESIS AND SEQUELS
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February 1942 publication
First edition of 2,000 copies sold out before publication
More than two million copies since (Since taking over its
publication in 2001, HarperSanFrancisco has sold almost one
million copies of the trade paperback alone.)
Still on the Publisher’s Weekly top ten list of religious paperback
bestsellers
Now on audio CD, narrated by John Cleese
Randy Alcorn, Lord Foulgrin's Letters, Revised edition, Sisters, OR:
Multnomah, 2001. ISBN 1-57673-679-2.
Peter Kreeft, The Snakebite Letters. Ignatius Press, 1993.
RANDY ALCORN
Another Interesting Adaptation
MOVIE
On Wednesday, January 31, 2006, it was
announced that Walden Media had bought the
rights to turn the book into a feature film. Walden
Media is the same company that previously
developed Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series. They
will work with Fox-based Ralph Winter Productions
and Bristol Bay Productions.
 To be co-produced by Ralph Winter and Douglas
Gresham
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A TOUCH OF HUMOR
One reader: Since Screwtape did not hold a
degree higher than a B.S., he recommended
that some “grateful university now welcome
him in gradum Doctoris in Satanitate
dishonoris causa.”
 I.e., “into the degree of Doctor in Satanism in
the cause of dishonor.” (an honorary, rather
than an earned, degree)
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ANOTHER TOUCH OF HUMOR
Calvin and Hobbes
Fictional first-grade teacher, Miss Wormwood
U2
Irish Rock Band from Dublin, Ireland
 Bono, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr., and David
Evans
 In the animated video to U2’s “Hold Me, Thrill
Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” a copy of The Screwtape
Letters is seen falling from Bono's hand.
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Sequel: “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”
A later essay with the scene set in Hell at the
annual dinner of the Tempters’ Training College
for young devils.
 First published in 1959 in an article in the
Saturday Evening Post.
 Speaker: Dr. Slubgob
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A LEWIS CAVEAT
It was distasteful to write!
 Why?
 Preface to “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”: “I
was often asked or advised to add to the
original ‘Screwtape Letters’, but for many years
I felt not the least inclination to do it. Though I
had never written anything more easily, I never
wrote with less enjoyment.”
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Preface
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“The ease came, no doubt, from the fact that the device
of diabolical letters, once you thought of it, exploits itself
spontaneously . . . . It would run away with you for a
thousand pages if you gave it its head. But though it was
easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it
was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort
of spiritual cramp. The world into which I had to project
myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust,
grit, thirst and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness and
geniality had to be excluded. It almost smothered me
before I was done. It would have smothered my readers
if I had prolonged it.”
Preface
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“I had, moreover, a sort of grudge against my book
for not being a different book which no one could
write. Ideally, Screwtape’s advice to Wormwood
should have been balanced by archangelical
advice to the patient’s guardian angel. Without
this the picture of human life is lop-sided. But who
could supply the deficiency? Even if a man—and
he would have to be a far better man than I—could
scale the spiritual heights required, what
‘answerable style’ could he use?”
FOOTNOTE TO THE PREVIOUS SLIDE
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“I had thought of having letters to the guardian
angel from an archangel side by side with those
from Screwtape to Wormwood in my Letters but
funked it” (Collected Letters, III, March 14,
1943, to Harry Blamires).
Preface
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“For the style would really be part of the
content. Mere advice would be no good; every
sentence would have to smell of Heaven. And
nowadays even if you could write prose like
Traherne’s, you wouldn’t be allowed to, for the
canon of ‘functionalism’ has disabled literature
for half its functions. (At bottom, every ideal of
style dictates not only how we should say things
but what sort of things we may say.)”
Preface
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“Then, as years went on and the stifling
experience of writing the ‘Letters’ became a
weaker memory, reflections on this and that which
seemed somehow to demand Screwtapian
treatment began to occur to me. I was resolved
never to write another ‘Letter’. The idea of
something like a lecture or ‘address’ hovered
vaguely in my mind, now forgotten, now recalled,
never written. Then came an invitation from The
Saturday Evening Post, and that pressed the
trigger.”
BEFORE THE PREFACE
The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not
yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout
him, for he cannot bear scorn. LUTHER
 The devil . . . The prowde spirite . . . Cannot
endure to be mocked. THOMAS MORE
 Luther and More, contemporaries
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A Screwtape Vocabulary
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Screwtape: Senior Devil
Wormwood: Junior Devil
The Enemy: God
Our Father Below: Satan
Patient: Human
Tempter/Temptership
Junior Tempter
Under-secretary
Lowerarchy: the opposite
of hierarchy
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High Command
Lower Command
Temple of Fame: Heaven
The Kingdom of Noise: Hell
The House of Correction
for Incompetent Tempters
The Infernal Police
Intelligence Department
Training College
A PERSONAL TOUCH FROM LEWIS
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In a Nov. 1960 letter to Jocelyn Gibb, Lewis wrote
regarding the American edition of The Screwtape
Letters:
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“In the legend [i.e. under Lewis’s drawing of
Screwtape] I don’t care for Mr. after Excellency. If
this can be altered without technical difficulties,
wd. ‘His Infernal Excellency Under Secretary S’ be
better? Or ‘Abysmal Sublimity’ etc. as at the end of
Letter XXII?”
IN PLACES, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL?
Mrs. Janie King Moore remained an atheist
throughout her life and always seemed to
resent Lewis’s conversion: Letter Three,
“Finally, tell me something about the old lady’s
religious position. Is she at all jealous of the
new factor in her son’s life?”
 The patient’s activities on home patrol during
the war mirror Lewis’s similar experiences.
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REVIEWS
David Foster Wallace’s 2006 book, The Top Ten,
names The Screwtape Letters as the greatest
novel in history.
 The Times Literary Supplement (Feb. 28, 1942):
“…in so readable a fashion Mr. Lewis has contrived
to say much that a distracted world greatly
requires to hear.”
 Manchester Guardian (Feb. 24, 1942): “The book
is sparkling yet truly reverent, in fact a perfect joy,
and should become a classic.”
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REVIEWS
The Guardian (March 13, 1942): “[Lewis] is in
earnest with his belief in devils, and as anxious to
unmask their strategy against souls as our
intelligence department to detect the designs of
Hitler.”
 The Hibbert Journal (July 1942): “It is to be hoped
that neither Mr. Lewis’s book, nor The Hibbert
Journal containing this review, will find its way into
those regions to apprise the infernal authorities of
their mistake.”
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REVIEWS
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C. E. M. Joad in the New Statesman and Nation (May 16,
1942): “Mr. Lewis possesses the rare gift of being able
to make righteousness readable, and has produced a
pretty piece of homily lit by flashes of insight.”
Charles Williams in The Dublin Review (October 1942):
“I allow that Mr. Lewis’s Screwtape is highly intelligent,
almost too intelligent for a devil, everywhere except in
the center. One of the pleasantest things in the book is
his failure there, his incapacity to understand what the
Enemy ‘is really up to’.”
REVIEWS
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In Time and Tide, Charles Williams begins, “My
dearest Scorpuscle.” He concludes with a final
paragraph: “It is a dangerous book, heavenlydangerous. I hate it, this give-away of hell.” He
signs the review, “Your sincere friend,
Snigsozzle.” And he adds this menacing
postscript: “You will send someone to see after
Lewis?—some very clever fiend?”
REVIEWS
“If wit and wisdom, style and scholarship are
requisites to passage through the pearly gates,
Mr. Lewis will be among the angels.” The New
Yorker
 Leonard Bacon in The Saturday Review of
Literature (April 17, 1943): “…this admirable,
diverting, and remarkably original work.…There
is a spectacular and satisfactory nova in the
bleak sky of satire.”
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THE END