Resources

The Owen Barfield Society

The Society was inaugurated in 2007 and its annual meetings are held under the auspices of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. Click here for the full Bibliography of published works.

Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

The Bodleian holds most of the papers from Barfield’s study. The collection includes literary manuscripts, working notes, appointment diaries, extensive correspondence with friends, colleagues and students, correspondence with his publishers, family photographs, and publications. There are also some papers of close family members and friends. The archive was first opened in 2010.

The Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, Illinois, USA

Contains books and articles by and about Barfield, including first editions; dissertations; periodicals; some audio-visual media; letters, manuscripts, and archives.

Owen Barfield Resources
A Chronology of Connections
Owen Barfield photos: The collection contains approximately 150 images of Barfield, along with some family members, dating from his childhood in the early 1900s through to the 1980s.

Azusa Pacific University

Owen Barfield Family Collection
Special Collections Library, CA, USA.

University of Toronto

E. J. Pratt Library of Victoria College Library, Canada:
Owen Barfield / S. T. Coleridge Collection. Includes the manuscript of Barfield’s edition of Coleridge’s Lectures 1818-1819 On the History of Philosophy

University of North Carolina

Special Collections Library: Owen Barfield / C.S. Lewis Estate Collection. Approximately 300 letters by Barfield dealing with C.S. Lewis’s literary matters, dated circa 1970 – 1980.

Owen Barfield’s Library of Books

In the mid 1980s, to move house, Barfield sold or donated the large part of his library. He kept with him about 1,500 of his most treasured books.

Of these: 266 books are preserved in the ‘Owen Barfield Family Collection’ of the Azusa Pacific University Library (near Los Angeles, CA, USA). These are mainly household books from the 1920’s when Barfield was an author/poet living near Oxford.

42 books were donated to the Wade Center, Wheaton College. These are German language texts, mainly on the topic of Anthroposophy. Barfield translated many original works by Rudolf Steiner into English, and imbued them with an “English Spirit”.

1,160 books were sold in 2001 by Walter Hooper via Waterfield’s bookshop in Oxford (now closed). The Waterfield’s two-part sale catalogue is available in the Wade Center, along with about 100 books from the sale.

A. Owen Barfield, study, mid 1970s

Owen Barfield