In what ways has the Wade Center impacted you?

 

The Wade Center has supported my research and writing during the past 25 years. I have written numerous articles and six books related to the life and work of C.S. Lewis and other Inklings, and the Wade has been a tremendous help in providing help and precious encouragement along the way.

Dr. Bruce L. Edwards
Professor Emeritus, English and Africana Studies
Bowling Green State University

* * *

I have published eight books related to C.S. Lewis, Ruth Pitter, and Joy Davidman. Each book has required extended visits to the Wade Center in order to complete critical research. I could not have written these books without the Wade Center. I always feel like I'm coming back to a best friend's home when I walk through the doors to the Wade Center. I have conducted research in many places, so I say with conviction that the facilities at the Wade Center are world-class.

Don W. King
Professor of English
Montreat College

* * *

It was my great good fortune to take two classes from Clyde Kilby at about the time he was transforming his informal C.S. Lewis collection into formal organization of what became the Wade Center.

Reading The Lord of the Rings out loud several times to each of our three children remains a highlight for me of their growing-up years, as I hope is true for them as well. To have that experience while also enjoying second-hand contact through the Wade Center with Tolkien and his friends continues to rank as one of the signal blessings of my life.

Mark Noll
Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History
University of Notre Dame

* * *

Wherever I am, the Wade Centre is always my second home. As a scholar, I have benefited from its comprehensive and unique holdings of both primary and secondary sources, while its very existence has reinforced to me the importance of these authors and of studying them seriously. More personally, I owe many of those important relationships of my life to the Wade directly. I met my wife there, and we spent the first years of our marriage in the encouraging atmosphere of the Wade.

Adam Schwartz
Professor of History
Christendom College

* * *

Halfway through my life, the Wade Center set me on an unexpected journey. I never really anticipated a return to academic writing, and the invitation to conduct original research in Wheaton took me by complete surprise. That first visit was transformative. If today I am making some positive contributions to scholarship related to C.S. Lewis, most of the credit goes to the Wade and to its staff.

Dr. Bruce R. Johnson
General Editor, Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal
Scottsdale, Arizona

* * *

I credit the Wade Center with enabling me to grow up from a “fan” into a “scholar” (although that process is still ongoing). It was my work there, the encouragement of the staff, the quality of the materials, and the positive results of my research that brought me into the real world of Inklings Studies.

Sørina Higgins
Signum University
Author of The Oddest Inkling blog

* * *

The Wade center is no doubt the best place in the world to study C.S. Lewis. In 2001, while I was a doctoral student at the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, I was working on my Ph.D. thesis on C.S. Lewis. During my research I realized that at the Wade Center, a large collection of manuscripts, dissertations, books and periodicals related to C.S. Lewis is available. At that time it was beyond my financial capacity to travel to the U.S. But thanks to the Domanada Foundation I was able to spend six weeks of intensive research in Wheaton, under the most helpful, patient and wise guidance of Chris Mitchell. Because of all the precious documents collected at the Wade Center I was able to complete my dissertation and later a book based on it, which happened to be a great success. Later in 2012, when I was working on my second book on C.S. Lewis (and his view of story), I was able to spend six weeks at the Wade Center. The same happened a year later in 2013 when I was writing my third book on Lewis (and his view of heaven). I benefited greatly not only from the amazing collection of material but also from the assistance of all the people working at the Wade Center. Some years ago I also sent one of my best doctoral students Matej Hajek to do research at the Wade Center, as he was working on his dissertation on Owen Barfield. It is to a large degree because of the Wade Center and the community of people around it, most notably Chris Mitchell and Jerry Root, that C.S. Lewis’s legacy is studied and spread in my country, the Czech Republic.

Pavel Hosek
Chair of Religious Studies, Protestant Theological Faculty
Charles University
Prague, Czech Republic

* * *

I particularly remember the privilege of launching my book, Planet Narnia, at an evening event in the Wade in January 2008. This kick-started for me a whole year’s lecturing in America and Britain, which in turn led to the BBC commissioning a television documentary about Lewis’s theological engagement with the symbolism of the seven heavens, which in turn opened up for me all sorts of further preaching and teaching opportunities. So I’m especially grateful to the Wade for helping precipitate that marvelous chain of events.

Dr. Michael Ward
Fellow of Blackfriars Hall
University of Oxford

*  *  *

The Wade Center has been a wonderful resource for me during the past few years. I recently have finished a book on C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. It would have been more difficult to write a book like this with confidence that I was not missing anything essential if I had not had the help and the insights of the staff at the Wade Center. Especially helpful at getting me oriented was a delightful afternoon conversation over a cup of tea with Chris Mitchell and Marjorie Mead. They both had valuable suggestions as to how best to proceed and about what already had been written that would be helpful on the topic. And Laura Schmidt is unsurpassed as an archivist.

George M. Marsden
Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus
University of Notre Dame

* * *

The Wade was the reason for my coming to Wheaton to complete an M.A. in Educational Ministries. Sayers was someone I wanted to read after coming across her "Lost Tools of Learning" while home-schooling my son, Richard. After Dr. Dorsett's suggestion that I rather immerse myself in Sayers, the end result was not a book, but a rough cut of a documentary on the life of Dorothy L. Sayers--a one-time presentation at the Dorothy L. Sayers Society Conventions in 2007 at Wheaton and at Cambridge to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her passing. It was the single-most thrilling and fulfilling project of my adult life!

What a gift to be allowed into the lives of the authors who continue to live at the Wade Center. I am deeply grateful for it and pray that future visitors to the Center have as much enjoyment and fulfillment in their faith journeys as have I.

Helen Durham, MA
President
Texill Broadcasting, Inc.