Barfield, Owen
Entry updated 13 October 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1898-1997) UK author and philologist who served in World War One; his first book, The Silver Trumpet (1925), is Fantasy. He was long involved with the Anthroposophical philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). A member of the Inklings group and a long-time associate of C S Lewis, Barfield contributed to Essays Presented to Charles Williams (anth 1947), which Lewis had organized; he also dedicated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) to Barfield's daughter Lucy. As G A L Burgeon, Barfield wrote This Ever Diverse Pair (1950), whose descriptions of a split personality edge into the fantastic after "rhematophobia" – a loathing of the spoken word – afflicts "them". Later works include Worlds Apart (1963), described as "A Dialogue of the 1960s", Unancestral Voice (1968) and Night Operation (Fall-Winter 1983-Summer-Fall 1984 Towards; 2008 chap), a Dystopia focused on a society which hides Underground, the reasons for doing so being cloaked in Amnesia. [JC]
see also: Fantasy Entries.
Arthur Owen Barfield
born London: 9 November 1898
died Uckfield, Essex: 14 December 1997
works (selected)
- The Silver Trumpet (London: Faber, 1925) [hb/]
- This Ever Diverse Pair (London: Victor Gollancz, 1950) as G A L Burgeon [hb/]
- Night Operation (Shinfield, Berkshire: Barfield Press, 2008) [chap: first appeared Fall-Winter 1983-Summer-Fall 1984 Towards: binding unknown/]
about the author
- W D Norwood Jr. "C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield and the Modern Myth" (Spring 1967 Midwest Quarterly #8) [mag/]
- Humphrey Carpenter. The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
- Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski. The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J R R Tolkien, C S Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) [nonfiction: hb/Donna Cheng]
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