Extollager
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http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2011/novdec/eerdmanscentury.html
You get only a teaser of the article, sorry to say.
Eerdmans was special back in the Seventies. They were the American publishers of Charles Williams's strange novels (still are) and a one-volume edition of Williams's Arthurian poetry that included C. S. Lewis's essential commentary; of a two-volume set of George MacDonald's shorter fantasies,* such as "The Golden Key," "The Light Princess," and "The Day Boy and the Night Girl," and of a one-volume edition of Phantastes and Lilith; they published The Pilgrim's Regress and the photo book that meant so much to me, C. S. Lewis: Images of His Life ... and quite a bit more.
Their books were well-made, too. Most of them were quality paperbacks, and I find that all of my copies from the Seventies have held up very well over the years, considering the sometimes heavy usage they have received. Occasionally Eerdmans published hardcover books, too; I have a festschrift for Clyde S. Kilby. Kilby was the main guy behind the development of the famous Wheaton College collection of books and manuscripts relating to Lewis, Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, MacDonald, Tolkien, and Williams. I've never been there, but apparently it's quite a wonderful place (I refer specifically to the Marion E. Wade Collection).
If you were a fan of the Inklings back then and were on a budget, you got your Tolkien in Ballantine paperbacks, quite a few of the more high-profile Lewis books in Macmillan paperbacks -- and much of the rest of your Inklings-related material would be from Eerdmans. I'm grateful that these publishers made it easy to get so many books in inexpensive editions; they were just what I wanted at the time.
*Later redone as four small-format paperbacks.
You get only a teaser of the article, sorry to say.
Eerdmans was special back in the Seventies. They were the American publishers of Charles Williams's strange novels (still are) and a one-volume edition of Williams's Arthurian poetry that included C. S. Lewis's essential commentary; of a two-volume set of George MacDonald's shorter fantasies,* such as "The Golden Key," "The Light Princess," and "The Day Boy and the Night Girl," and of a one-volume edition of Phantastes and Lilith; they published The Pilgrim's Regress and the photo book that meant so much to me, C. S. Lewis: Images of His Life ... and quite a bit more.
Their books were well-made, too. Most of them were quality paperbacks, and I find that all of my copies from the Seventies have held up very well over the years, considering the sometimes heavy usage they have received. Occasionally Eerdmans published hardcover books, too; I have a festschrift for Clyde S. Kilby. Kilby was the main guy behind the development of the famous Wheaton College collection of books and manuscripts relating to Lewis, Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, MacDonald, Tolkien, and Williams. I've never been there, but apparently it's quite a wonderful place (I refer specifically to the Marion E. Wade Collection).
If you were a fan of the Inklings back then and were on a budget, you got your Tolkien in Ballantine paperbacks, quite a few of the more high-profile Lewis books in Macmillan paperbacks -- and much of the rest of your Inklings-related material would be from Eerdmans. I'm grateful that these publishers made it easy to get so many books in inexpensive editions; they were just what I wanted at the time.
*Later redone as four small-format paperbacks.
