Marion E. Wade Center
The Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College (Illinois) is a special research collection of papers, books, and manuscripts, primarily relating to seven authors from the United Kingdom: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and George MacDonald, as well as C. S. Lewis's wife, the poet Joy Davidman. The center is named after Marion E. Wade, founder of ServiceMaster Corp.
The Wade Center serves primarily as a research center, attracting scholars from around the world. It holds at least one copy of every book written by the Wade authors, plus books, articles, and other materials about the various writers. It holds the world's fullest collection of the writings of Dorothy L. Sayers, including 30,000 pages of letters and documents both published and unpublished. For some of the Wade authors, collections of family documents are also available.
History and organization
The center was founded in 1965 by Clyde S. Kilby. In 2001 a new building was completed at the edge of the Wheaton College campus to house the Wade Center, with an expanded reading room, classroom space, and an enlarged exhibits area. C. S. Lewis's dining-room table, which used to serve as desk space for visiting researchers, has been moved into the exhibits area near the Wade's own Lewis wardrobe.
The small staff was headed by director Christopher W. Mitchell (author of Through the Wardrobe and into the Mind of C. S. Lewis, 2009), until his departure to teach at Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. It was also headed by Associate Director Marjorie Lamp Mead (author of A Reader's Guide Through the Wardrobe: Exploring C. S. Lewis's Classic Story, and of A Reader's Guide To Caspian: a journey into C. S. Lewis's Narnia).
The Center hosts special events related to its authors: meetings of scholarly societies, book discussions and classes, film-release celebrations, etc.
Publications
The Wade Center also publishes the journal VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review,[1] highlighting works by and about the Wade authors.