The Owen Barfield Literary Estate Blog

Peace-Making and the Economic Earth: on Barfield’s 1936 letter on “Nationalism and Economics”

Ninety years ago, on April 3, 1936, The Spectator published a letter to the editor by Owen Barfield, which it headlined “Nationalism and Economics”. The letter, about the reality of the world’s economic life and the failure of that reality to be reflected in relations between nation-states, repays attention in 2026. The states uppermost in our minds have changed, and to some extent so have the raw materials being sought and the products being sold. But the failure remains the same.


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The Place of Rudolf Steiner in World Culture

A transcript of a talk given by Simon Blaxland-de Lange on 30th March 2025 during the marking of the centenary of Rudolf Steiner’s death at Rudolf Steiner House, London.

It is a symptom of the present condition of earthly humanity that many people would say that one cannot realistically speak of something such as “world culture”. Quite apart from the inherent problems of trying to define any kind of global phenomenon with a single differentiated, localised idea, the very notion of “culture” (other than as a memory or reflection of former times) is often called into question or used synonymously to refer merely to entertainment.


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Owen Barfield and the Mystery of the Word

In his lectures, Rudolf Steiner spoke on a number of occasions about the enactment of a decree at the 8th Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in the year 869 – in defiance of the view of the Eastern Church, represented by Patriarch Photius – to the effect that man does not have a spirit but only a soul with certain spiritual attributes. Steiner adds that the Catholic Church has done its best to instil this notion in the minds of those belonging to Western Christendom, thus in his view laying the foundations for the Scientific Revolution and the materialistic paradigm.


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For Christmas: The Silver Trumpet on its 100th Anniversary

In November 2024, I wrote on this blog about what was then the planned publication in 2025 of a new edition of Owen Barfield’s fairy-tale, The Silver Trumpet. Specifically I noted that it would be published by the Barfield Press on the 100th anniversary of its first publication. That gave rise, as I wrote, to a particular curiosity:

I had been wondering recently precisely when in 1925 the book was published by Faber & Gwyer, the predecessor of the publishing house still in existence, Faber & Faber.


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The Music That Shapes the Soul: Owen Barfield, Original Participation, and the Future of Education

I’m incredibly fortunate to be a piano teacher and music composition instructor to students of all ages a few days each week. I also perform, compose, create content for YouTube, and write music education books. My time is spent nurturing the imagination. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge beautifully put it, “The primary Imagination I hold to be … a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.”

It’s quite common for younger students to study with me, in some cases because of the decline of music in schools and the lack of imagination in the curriculum.


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Barfield news: O.B. Symposium in London, November 2025, Rediscovery of Meaning reading group, and a Silver Trumpet review

It is fair to say that there is a feeling of activity and liveliness with everything that touches on Owen Barfield at the moment. Maybe what will turn out to be important in this in the long run is the connections that may be formed between people interested in Barfield’s writing and thinking about thinking. That is not at all to say that the thinking merely underwrites the forming of communities and the friendships that may happen. Rather it is to bring home that the final participation Barfield sought is not finally a private matter for individuals.


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Haunted by Heidegger

We are haunted by Martin Heidegger. Even if you’ve never read a word of his dense philosophical texts, his ghost walks beside you, shaping how you imagine your place in the world. His spectral influence permeates our modern consciousness, guiding how we understand our relationship to reality, technology, and meaning itself. Heidegger’s philosophical project emerged as a desperate attempt to resolve the existential crisis that had been brewing in Western thought explicitly since the Romantic era—a crisis most eloquently articulated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who recognised the growing chasm between subjective experience and the objective world.


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Silver Trumpet new edition round-up: a date for your diary, a review and a request for help

We hope those who have got a copy of the new edition of The Silver Trumpet in the two months have enjoyed reading it, or are enjoying it.

This post is a brief one, by way of information, of news after the new edition’s publication.

Online Event

Whether you have read The Silver Trumpet or not, you may be interested in an online event being held next month by the Inkling Folk Fellowship, details as follows.

  • Topic: Owen Barfield‘s The Silver Trumpet (in Honor of its Republication), with Landon Loftin and Edwin Woodruff-Tait
  • Date and Time: Friday 8th August, 2025.

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The new edition of The Silver Trumpet is out now!

The new edition of The Silver Trumpet has now been published!

It is a delight for the Barfield Press to publish this tale, the first work of fantasy by the group of writers that came to be known as the Inklings, on the centenary of its first publication in 1925.

The blurb is as follows:

The Silver Trumpet was the first children’s fantasy story to be published by one of the Inklings. Its early success with the children of Barfield’s friend and fellow Inkling, J.R.R.

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Owen Barfield’s Reception of The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

Owen Barfield, whom C. S. Lewis described archetypally as his “Second Friend” – “the man who disagrees with you about everything […] not so much the alter ego as the antiself” – on a number of occasions expressed his agreement with the argument of The Abolition of Man, and his admiration of the book. For example, describing various means by which one can become aware of the presuppositions of one’s thoughts, Barfield once wrote:

One, of which the best example I know is C.


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