In the 1950s, Dr. Clyde S. Kilby, an English professor at |
Wheaton College, began a correspondence with C.S. Lewis. Over the next |
several years, he had the opportunity to meet Lewis and eventually received |
15 letters from him. After C.S. Lewis's death in 1963, Dr. Kilby |
was inspired to establish the "The C.S. Lewis Collection", a |
repository that eventually would include not only Lewis items, but also |
materials from six other British writers whom Lewis either knew or |
who significantly influenced him: Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, |
George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Dr. Kilby's proposal to form a Lewis Collection was accepted by the |
Wheaton College Library Committee in 1965, and he began the years of travel, relationship-building, and gathering of materials that would lay |
a strong foundation for the Collection.
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and C.S. Lewis aficionado, established an endowment in his memory |
to support the Collection, which was then renamed "The Marion E. |
Wade Collection". In 1980, the Center published the first volume of |
its academic journal, SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review. Dr. Kilby, Dr. Beatrice Batson, and Dr. Barbara Reynolds founded SEVEN to |
provide a venue for critical assessment of the works of the seven Wade authors. Following Dr. Kilby's retirement in 1981, the Wade Center |
has flourished under directors, Dr. Lyle W. Dorsett, (1983-1990) and Dr. Christopher W. Mitchell, (1993-present).
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was moved between various locations on Wheaton College's campus, including Blanchard |
Hall and Buswell Library. In 1998, with the generous help of Marion Wade' |
s daughter Mary, the Wade Center began construction of a new |
limestone building fashioned after the style of an English manor house, |
which opened in 2001. This facility has made it possible to serve more than12,000 visitors a year, through the museum, the reading room, discussion groups, and speaking engagement.
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map of Narnia. |