Bruce Edwards 1952-2015

Bruce Edwards

Bruce Edwards

Renowned C. S. Lewis scholar Bruce Edwards died October 28 from a ruptured aortic aneurysm while on a visit to Texas. He was 63.

Edwards served as general editor of a four-volume reference set, C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy (Praeger Perspectives, 2007), a comprehensive treatment of Lewis’s life with more than 40 worldwide contributors.

He wrote a pair of books about Lewis, A Rhetoric of Reading: C. S. Lewis’s Defense of Western Literacy and The Taste of the Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer (a Mythopoeic Award nominee in 1991), and two books on The Chronicles of Narnia — Not a Tame Lion (Tyndale, 2005) and Further Up and Further In: Understanding C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Edwards contributed to the C. S. Lewis Bible (Harper, 2010), and published many essays about Lewis and the Inklings.

He also maintained The CS Lewis Review, a focal point for Lewis scholarship.

And Edwards produced several textbooks for college audiences, including, Roughdrafts (1987), Processing Words (1988), and Searching for Great Ideas (1989).

Edwards was the recipient of a 1990-2000 Fulbright Program Fellowship to Kenya, and a 2005 Fulbright-Hays Grant that allowed him to take a contingent of public and private educators to Tanzania for six weeks in the summer of 2005 to establish internet-based educational opportunities for both Midwestern U.S. and Tanzanian students.

He served as a faculty member and administrator at Bowling Green State University in Ohio for over 31 years. He retired from BGSU in 2012 and moved with his wife, Joan, to Alaska.

During his career at BGSU, he was chairman of more than 100 master’s theses committees and more than 30 doctoral dissertation committees.

“He was a cheerleader,” said Joan. “He enjoyed helping people succeed.”

The family obituary is here.

Edwards is survived by Joan, their four children, and five grandchildren.

After retiring he continued to speak and teach about C. S. Lewis. His video introduction to an online course gives a glimpse of his personality and his love for his topic. It begins: “Welcome to Alaska, where it is always Narnia, and never winter.”

Diana’s Notices

Many thanks to Bruce Edwards for reminding the readers of his popular CS Lewis & Inklings Resource Blog that The Company They Keep, Diana’s book about the Inklings, is now in paperback:

Just in time for you to buy yourself the Christmas present you wanted last year, The Company They Keep, Diana Glyer’s magnificent work on the Inklings, has just been released in paperback.

The New Writer's Handbook Volume 2Also, Diana’s contribution to The New Writer’s Handbook Volume 2, published in August, was singled out for praise by blogger “Emily Veinglory”:

I particularly enjoyed Diana Glyer’s piece on the writing group Tolkein and CS Lewis were in with some information about the earlier drafts of Lord of the Rings. Several other essays gave me ideas I intend to try out. …