Continuing with Lewis’s September
2, 1957 letter to Jane Gaskell:
You are too fond of long adverbs like ‘dignifiedly’, which are not nice
to pronounce. I hope, by the way, you always write by ear not by eye. Every
sentence shd. be tested on the tongue, to make sure that the sound of it has
the hardness or softness, the swiftness or languor, which the meaning of it
calls for.
Haskell was 14
when she wrote the book Lewis read; she was 16 or 17 when Lewis wrote to her.
Here is a world-renown author and professor at Cambridge taking the time to write to a
teenager, and not just write, but to critique and offer advice.
Lewis concludes
the letter with:
I hope all this does not enrage you. You’ll get so much bad advice that
I felt I must give you some of what I think good.
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