C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis's Backstory

Early life

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast on Nov. 29, 1898, the younger son of Albert Lewis, a solicitor, and Flora Hamilton Lewis; his elder brother was Warren, called “Warnie.”¹ His mother died of cancer in 1908, and he was sent to schools in England, including Malvern College, before being tutored privately by William T. Kirkpatrick, whom he called “The Great Knock.”¹³

War and Oxford

He won a scholarship to University College, Oxford, in 1916, then served as an officer in the Somerset Light Infantry and was wounded in France in 1918.¹³ He had promised his friend Paddy Moore, who was killed in the war, that he would look after Moore’s mother, and he lived with her for many years.¹ Back at Oxford he took firsts in Honour Moderations, Greats and English, and in 1925 he was elected Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen College, where he taught until 1954.¹⁶ His first two books, the poems Spirits in Bondage (1919) and Dymer (1926), appeared under the name Clive Hamilton.¹³

Conversion and the Inklings

Lewis had given up Christianity as a schoolboy.³ He came to believe in God in 1929, calling himself “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England,” and after long talks with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson he returned to Christianity in 1931.¹ With Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and others he belonged to the Inklings, a group that met at the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford.¹ His science-fiction trilogy began with Out of the Silent Planet (1938), and The Screwtape Letters followed in 1942.²³ Between 1941 and 1944 he gave 25 BBC radio talks, later developed into Mere Christianity (1952).³

Narnia

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published in London on Oct. 16, 1950, with illustrations by Pauline Baynes.⁷ Lewis said the story began with a picture he had carried since about age 16, a faun with an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood.¹⁴ He had no plan for a series when he wrote it; six more books followed, one a year, ending with The Last Battle (1956), which won the Carnegie Medal.¹¹²⁸ Geoffrey Bles published the first five and The Bodley Head the last two; HarperCollins is now the series’ worldwide publisher.⁷ Lewis described the books as “supposals” rather than allegory.¹¹¹²

Cambridge, marriage and last years

In 1954 Lewis became the first Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge, with a fellowship at Magdalene College.⁴⁵ He married the American poet Joy Davidman in a civil ceremony in 1956 and in a church ceremony at her hospital bed in 1957; she died of cancer in 1960.³¹ He wrote about his grief in A Grief Observed (1961), published as N.W. Clerk.¹ He resigned his Cambridge chair in 1963 after learning he was terminally ill, and he died at The Kilns, his home in Oxford, on Nov. 22, 1963.⁵¹³ In 2013, 50 years after his death, a memorial stone was placed in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.¹⁵

The Magician's Nephew

At a glance

C.S. Lewis's Backstory

Early life

War and Oxford

Conversion and the Inklings

Narnia

Cambridge, marriage and last years

Fun facts

Books

The Space Trilogy

The Chronicles of Narnia

Latest news

Adaptations and other media

Film

Television

Stage

Audio and radio

Video and tabletop games

Myth and record

Timeline

What came after

Sources