C.S. Lewis

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   The line ΓÇ£You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit meΓÇ¥ comes to us through Walter Hooper, C. S. LewisΓÇÖs secretary and later his literary executor. The earliest reliable appearance of the quote is in HooperΓÇÖs preface to Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, first published in 1966 in the United States and later in the United Kingdom under the title Of This and Other Worlds in 1982. Hooper presents it there as something Lewis said to him in conversation. Hooper later retold the same moment, describing Lewis sitting at the Kilns with a very large cup of tea and reading DickensΓÇÖs Bleak House during the period when Hooper was living with him in 1963. That timing matches the months when Hooper served as LewisΓÇÖs personal secretary, shortly before LewisΓÇÖs death. Because the recollection appears in multiple places from Hooper himself, scholars treat it as a genuine remembered remark. What does not exist is any published letter containing this line. The story about a ΓÇ£14 December 1955 letter to a young girl named Joan Lancaster LewisΓÇ¥ is a modern internet invention. It does not appear in the three volume Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis and has no archival support. The intent of the remark is straightforward. Lewis is simply expressing his enjoyment of two things that never wear out their welcome: strong tea and long books. It is casual, humorous, and domestic, the kind of affectionate comment one makes in conversation with a friend. Readers have held onto it because it matches what they already sense about Lewis himself, a man who found deep contentment in reading and in the ordinary comforts of life.