Publisher: Owen Barfield has been called “the first and last Inkling.” He was, in effect, a founding member of the 1920’s Oxford-based group, which included C. S. Lewis (who called Barfield “the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers”) and J. R. R. Tolkien (on whom Barfield’s book Poetic Diction had an appreciable impact). Often called a Christian thinker, Barfield argued for a holistic approach to language and reality—an approach at odds with the reductionist, atomistic views prevalent in Oxbridge intellectual circles at the time. History in English Words (1926), Barfield’s first nonfiction book, seeks to discover the evolution of consciousness in Western civilization by exploring the change in meanings of various Indo-Aryan words as used in the British Isles in particular. Barfield’s history in words, illustrated throughout by common English terms, is a pathway to discovering our humanity. “In our language alone,” he writes, “not to speak of its many companions, the past history of humanity is spread out in an imperishable map, just as the history of mineral earth lies embedded in layers of its outer crust. . . .Language has preserved for us the inner, living history of our soul.” Barfield’s purpose is not to break down language into its smallest parts in order to facilitate daily communication. It is to understand words as speech—the common property of humans—that reveals the mind and allows for the deeper communication that underlies all human activity.

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Columbia Books opened in 1977 and began selling online in 1991 with the advent of Interloc; we've been selling on abebooks since they first began. We have an eclectic mix of 30,000 books, ephemera and artwork; something for collectors and readers alike.

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Columbia Books Inc.
1907 Gordon St., Columbia, MO, 65201, U.S.A.

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Annette Kolling-Buckley
Columbia Books, Inc. ABAA/ILAB
1907 Gordon Street
Columbia, MO 65201
573-449-7417
colbooks@tranquility.net
www.columbiabooksonline.com

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