Meet C.S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis is the best-known, most widely-read and most-quoted advocate for the Christian faith during the last half-century. Born in 1898, two years after his brother Warren, his early life in Northern Ireland was happy and relatively privileged. His father, a lawyer, and his mother, who graduated in mathematics, encouraged their children both academically and creatively. Their two-storey home in Belfast was stacked full of books, any of which they were allowed to read. “Warnie” and “Jack” (as C.S. Lewis preferred to be called) spent a lot of time reading Greek and Norse myths as well as playing them out. Though his mother taught Jack Latin, he also grew up loving the writings of popular children's authors like E. Nesbit, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame and George MacDonald.
When he was 10, his mother, Flora, died of cancer and her death came as a tremendous blow. His father, Albert, became more remote as he tried to deal with his loss. As a result, Jack and his brother grew closer together. They retreated into an imaginary world of their own creation called Boxen, and much later their youthful stories and drawings about this were published. Jack was then sent to boarding school, an experience he found intensely restrictive and unpleasant, and where he finally lost his early Christian faith. Next he was sent to Malvern College, a small private school in England, from whose rigorous headmaster G.H. Kirkpatrick he began to develop his formidable skills in reasoning and debating. At the age of 16, a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella in a snowy wood came into his mind—a scene that stayed with him and was the origin of what 35 years later became the first of his Chronicles of Narnia.
In 1917 Lewis volunteered to enlist in the British Army and fought in various bloody engagements on the Somme. The horror of trench warfare affected him deeply, as did the loss of some of his closest friends. With one of these friends, Paddy Moore, Jack had made a mutual vow to financially support and care for the other's family if one of them should die. For the next 30 years, Lewis honoured this pledge by making Paddy's mother and sister his adopted family. Meanwhile at Oxford University, he distinguished himself by gaining a rare Triple First degree. In time he became a Tutor and ultimately a Lecturer there. He also began to form a number of friendships with other academics, like J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, and writers such as Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and Dorothy Sayers. Under his guidance, they began to meet weekly in his rooms at Magdalen College and in a local pub called The Eagle and Child to read and discuss each other's writings.
Through reading works of poetry, philosophy and literature written by Christian authors, and having conversations with Tolkien and Dyson, Lewis became more open again to Christianity. At around the age of 30, this ultimately led to his regaining a belief in God and, a little later, trust in Christ. During his life he wrote more than 30 books—a few highly-praised works in his academic field, from The Allegory of Love to An Experiment in Criticism, with the remainder advocating and defending the Christian faith. The latter included evangelistic and apologetic works, for example The Problem of Pain and The Four Loves; children's fantasy and science fictions novels such as The Chronicles of Narnia and his Space Trilogy; imaginative theological and devotional writings such as The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters and autobiographical writings like Surprised by Joy and A Grief Observed. Along with other things, he also wrote poetry, a book on educational philosophy, a wide range of essays and articles, and thousands of letters to adults and children around the world.
During the Second World War, he took several child evacuees from London into The Kilns, his home in Oxford, and spoke in front of a wide range of groups, including the RAF. He was also asked to record 25 talks on radio for the BBC, later published as Mere Christianity, as a result of which his voice was the best-known in England after Winston Churchill's. In 1947, following publication of his book on Miracles, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, cementing his increasing popularity in North America. Six years later, having been rejected for a Chair in Oxford because of his public Christian stand, he was invited to become Professor in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Shortly before this, he began a correspondence with the American author and award-winning poet, Joy Gresham, whom he met when she made a visit to England in 1953. To his surprise, their friendship eventually developed into a romantic relationship—though, due to Joy contracting cancer, their marriage only lasted a few years until her death in 1960. This part of his life became known to a wider circle of people through the stage play and then TV and feature films, Shadowlands.
Today the popularity of Lewis's writings grows every year. Along with the oft-screened BBC Television productions of four of The Chronicles of Narnia and audio versions of many of his writings, there are now more than 100 million copies of C.S. Lewis's books in print in many different languages. The recent highly successful feature film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has now brought his name to an even wider audience.
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, NARNIA, and all book titles, characters and locales original thereto are trademarks of C.S. Lewis Pty Ltd. and are used with permission. © DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC. and WALDEN MEDIA, LLC. All rights reserved.
