Some of it was delivered in “embryonic form,” as Lewis said, during a 1944 lecture series. Still, he soldiered on, year after year, working slowly through the library, writing, revising, amassing enough text for a nearly 700-page book. He wondered if “there’s any chance of the world ending before the O HELL appears?” “I have a growing doubt I ought to be doing this.” Only three years in and he could already tell it would take him forever. “The O HELL lies like a nightmare on my chest,” he wrote one of the project editors, Frank Percy Wilson, in 1938. The acronym of the Oxford series provided him just the joke he needed to capture how he felt about the project. It was a beast to complete, and Lewis didn’t finish until 1953-eighteen years after contracting to write the book. Interesting that the book formally excludes drama because that’s what marked its composition. Lewis agreed to contribute a book to the Oxford History of English Literature: English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford University Press, 1954), 696 pages.
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