All the Authors We Forgot Along the Way

C.S. Lewis’s Bad Prediction, Finding Zora, Losing Ursula, Saving Gatsby, and What Publishers Can Do

C.S. Lewis never imagined the lasting influence he would have. “After I’ve been dead five years,” he told his friend Owen Barfield, “no one will read anything I’ve written.” Proving the old don wrong, this year marks the sixtieth year of his passing, and Lewis is read today perhaps more than ever.

Still, it’s a reasonable hunch. Books are not immortal. T…