Early reviews of the book were mostly positive, but Lewis was stunned to realize that almost no one discerned in it the biblical doctrine of the fall, which anchors the entire story. “If only there were someone with a richer talent and more leisure, I believe this great ignorance might be a help to the evangelization of England,” he wrote to a friend. “Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under cover of romance without their knowing it.”108 Here is an insight Lewis surely encountered in his many conversations with J. R. R. Tolkien.
