Roger Lancelyn Green
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Roger (Gilbert) Lancelyn Green (2 November 1918 – 8 October 1987) was a British biographer and children's writer. He was an Oxford academic who formed part of the Inklings literary discussion group.
Lancelyn Green studied under C. S. Lewis at Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained a B. Litt. degree.
Lancelyn Green produced retellings of the myths of Greece (Tales of the Greek Heroes and A Tale of Troy) and Egypt (Tales of Ancient Egypt), as well the Norse mythology (Myths of the Norsemen and The Saga of Asgard) and the stories of King Arthur (King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table) and Robin Hood (The Adventures of Robin Hood).
He wrote biographies of J. M. Barrie, Andrew Lang and C. S. Lewis. His new edition of selected tales of Hans Christian Andersen contains a short biography. He wrote a brief biography of Anthony Hope as the introduction to a one-volume Everyman's Library edition of The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau. He was editor of the Kipling Journal, 1957–79.
Lancelyn Green was particularly interested in Lewis Carroll, publishing several books and articles. His book The Story of Lewis Carroll (1949) led to an invitation from Carroll's nieces to produce an edited version of his diary; this appeared in 1953. It has been widely stated that Green worked only with transcripts of the diary provided by Carroll's nieces but this is not the case. Green saw all the surviving volumes of the diaries and (as he states in his introduction) was free to include whatever he wanted in his edition. He was later a founder and vice-president of the Lewis Carroll Society and helped Morton N. Cohen to edit Carroll's collected letters.
He was a part-time professional actor, 1942–5, and was a member of the Oxford literary group, the Inklings, led by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. He was Deputy Librarian of Merton College, Oxford, 1945–50 and William Nobel Research Fellow in English Literature at the University of Liverpool, 1950–2. He was later a member of the Council of the University of Liverpool, (1964–70).
Lancelyn Green delivered the 1968 Andrew Lang lecture.
His son was the writer Richard Lancelyn Green.
