'Barfield towers above us all ...the wisest and best of my unofficial teachers.' - C.S. Lewis 'We are well supplied with interesting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting. His ambition is to set us free ...from the prison we have made for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our limited and false habits of thought, our "common sense".' - Saul Bellow Owen Barfield - philosopher, author, poet and critic - was a founding member of the Inklings group, the private Oxford society that included the leading literary figures C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. C.S. Lewis, who was greatly affected by Barfield during their long friendship, wrote of their many heated debates: 'I think he changed me a good deal more than I him.' Simon Blaxland de Lange's biography - the first on Owen Barfield to be published - was written with the active cooperation of Barfield who, before his death in 1997, gave numerous interviews to the author, as well as lending a large quantity of his papers and manuscripts. The fruit of this collaboration is a book that penetrates deeply into the life and thought of one of the most important figures of the twentieth century.
It studies the influences on Barfield by the Romantic poet Coleridge and the philosopher Rudolf Steiner (founder of Anthroposophy), and focuses on Barfield's profound personal connection with C.S. Lewis. The book also features a biographical sketch in his own words (based on the personally conducted interviews), and describes his strong relationship with North America and his dual profession as a lawyer and writer.