Roger Gilbert Lancelyn Green

**Roger Gilbert Lancelyn Green** (2 November 1918 – 8 October 1987) was a British biographer and children's writer. He was an Oxford academic who formed part of the Inklings literary discussion group along with Clive Staples Lewis and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. He had a positive influence on his friend, C.S. Lewis, by encouraging him to publish *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe*.

## Relationship to Space Trilogy

Lewis said that his Space Trilogy was written in response to the dehumanising currents of modern science fiction.
Lewis stated in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green:

"*What immediately spurred me to write was Olaf Stapledon's* Last and First Men *… and an essay in J.B.S. Haldane's* Possible Worlds *both of wh[ich] seemed to take the idea of such [space] travel seriously and to have the desperately immoral outlook wh[ich] I try to pillory in Weston. I like the whole interplanetary ideas as a* mythology *and simply wished to conquer for my own (Christian) p[oin]t of view what has always hitherto been used by the opposite side. I think H. G. Wells'* First Men in the Moon *the best of the sort I have read …*"
The existence of *The Dark Tower* was announced in 1966, three years after Lewis' death, by Walter McGehee Hooper in the preface of *Of Other Worlds*. He claimed that Warren Lewis, Jack's brother, and their gardener were burning Lewis' papers and that he had saved them. There was a further mention of its existence in Roger Lancelyn Green's biography of C.S. Lewis published in 1974, along with a synopsis, and three years later Hooper published the work along with other pieces he had found.

## Biography

Roger Lancelyn Green was born in 1918 in Norwich, England, to Major Gilbert Arthur Lancelyn Green (1887–1947), of the Royal Artillery, and Helena Mary Phyllis, daughter of Lt-Col Charles William Henry Sealy, of Hambledon House, Hampshire. The landed gentry Lancelyn Green family can be traced back to 1093, with the marriage of Randle Greene (sic) and Elizabeth, daughter of William Lancelyn, taking place in the reign of Elizabeth I.

He studied under Clive Staples Lewis at Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained a B.Litt. degree. As an undergraduate, he performed in the Oxford University Dramatic Society's Shakespeare dramas produced by Nevill Coghill, also a member of the Inklings. He was deputy librarian at Merton College from 1945 to 1950, then William Noble Research Fellow in English Literature at the University of Liverpool from 1950 to 1952. As Andrew Lang Lecturer at the University of St Andrew from 1968 to 1969, he delivered the 1968 Andrew Lang lecture.

Lancelyn Green remained close to Lewis until the latter's death in 1963, and holidayed in Greece with Lewis and his wife Joy Gresham just before her death from cancer in 1960. When Lewis started writing the Narnia books in the late 1940s, Lancelyn Green suggested that they should be called *The Chronicles of Narnia*.

Lancelyn Green lived in Cheshire at Poulton Hall, a manor house that his ancestors had owned for more than 900 years; he was Lord of the Manors of Poulton-Lancelyn and Lower Bebington. He died on 8 October 1987 at the age of 68.

One of his sons was the writer Richard Lancelyn Green.

## Works

### Fiction

Lancelyn Green became known primarily for his writings for children, particularly his retellings of the myths of Ancient Greece(*Tales of the Greek Heroes* and *The Tale of Troy*) and Egypt (*Tales of Ancient Egypt*), as well the Norse mythology (*The Saga of Asgard*, later renamed *Myths of the Norsemen*) and the stories of Arthur the King (*King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table*) and Robin Hood (*The Adventures of Robin Hood*). His works of original fiction include *The Luck of Troy*, set during the Trojan War, and *The Land of the Lord High Tiger*, a fantasy story that has been compared to The Chronicles of Narnia.

## References

1. ↑ *Collected Letters*, II, 236f.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Burke's Landed Gentry, 18th ed., vol. 3, ed. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, 1972, 'Lancelyn Green of Poulton-Lancelyn' pedigree
3. ↑ . Basil Blackwell (1964).
4. ↑ Glyer, Diana (2007). . Kent State UP.
5. ↑ C. S. Lewis Foundation - The Life of C.S. Lewis. Cslewis.org.
6. ↑ The Chronicles of Narnia | Myword. Myword.in.