Walter McGehee Hooper is a literary advisor of the estate of C.S. Lewis. He was a literary trustee for Owen Barfield from December 1997 to October 2006. Hooper was born in Reidsville, North Carolina, United States. He earned an M.A. in education and was an instructor in English at the University of Kentucky in the early 1960s. He served briefly in 1963 as C.S. Lewis's private secretary when Lewis was in declining health. He devoted himself to Lewis's memory after his death in November 1963, eventually taking up residence in Oxford, England, where he now lives. Hooper studied for the Anglican ministry and was ordained, serving as a chaplain and assistant priest in Oxford. He converted to the Roman Catholic faith in 1988. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and symposia.
Literary work
Hooper's work has been that of a literary executor and advocate rather than independent scholar. His works include:
Through Joy and Beyond: A Pictorial Biography of C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide
C.S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life and Works
In addition, Hooper has edited or written introductions for approximately 30 books of Lewisian manuscripts and scholarship. Several of these books contain previously unknown or little-known works by Lewis. The following works are edited by Hooper:
All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C.S. Lewis, 1922–27. San Diego: Harcourt, 1991.
Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C.S. Lewis. New York: Harcourt, 1985.
Christian Reflections. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967.
The Dark Tower & Other Stories. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977.
The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Edited with introduction by Walter Hooper. New York: Macmillan, 1980.
They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves. New York: Macmillan, 1979.
Letters of C.S. Lewis. Edited with a memoir by W.H. Lewis. Revised and enlarged by Walter Hooper. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1988.
Honors
In 1972 Hooper was awarded the second annual Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies, for scholarly contribution to the criticism and appreciation of the epic fantasy literature generated by the Inklings School, by the Mythopoeic Society.
Controversy
In 1977, Hooper published the unfinished science fiction novelThe Dark Tower, a previously unknown work by C.S. Lewis. The novel resembles Lewis's known works in some ways and departs from them in others. A school of critics headed by Kathryn Lindskoog accused Hooper of either forging the work in toto or adding a lot of padding onto small fragments of an unknown work by Lewis to create the published work. Lindskoog also questioned the authenticity of other posthumously published works edited by Hooper. Hooper has rejected these accusations, and independent research exists to disprove them and confirm the authenticity of the posthumous Lewis works edited by Hooper. Professor Alastair Fowler of University of Edinburgh had Lewis as his doctoral supervisor in 1952, and he recalls discussing The Dark Tower with his mentor. This is a firsthand account of the manuscript's existence during Lewis' lifetime. Lewis' stepson Douglas Gresham also disagrees with Lindskoog's forgery claims. "The whole controversy thing was engineered for very personal reasons…. Her fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited."
