C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, on 29 November 1898 and died on 22 November 1963. He worked as a British author, a scholar of English literature, and a lay theologian in the Anglican tradition. For nearly three decades, he taught English at Oxford’s Magdalen College, then moved to Cambridge’s Magdalene College until his death. Though best remembered for *The Chronicles of Narnia*, he also wrote fiction like *The Screwtape Letters* and *The Space Trilogy*, plus Christian apologetics such as *Mere Christianity*, *Miracles*, and *The Problem of Pain*.

Lewis counted J. R. R. Tolkien among his close friends. Both taught English at Oxford and belonged to the informal literary circle called the Inklings. In his 1955 memoir *Surprised by Joy*, Lewis recalled being baptized in the Church of Ireland as a child, then losing his faith during his teenage years. At age 32, influenced by Tolkien and other friends, he returned to Anglicanism and described himself as an ordinary lay member of the Church of England. His faith shaped his writing, and his wartime radio talks on Christianity earned him widespread recognition.

Over his career, Lewis produced more than 30 books, translated into over 30 languages and selling millions of copies. The seven Narnia volumes have sold the most and have been adapted for stage, television, radio, and film. Christian scholars from many denominations frequently cite his philosophical works.

In 1956, Lewis married American writer Joy Davidman. She died of cancer four years later, at age 45. Lewis himself died of kidney failure on 22 November 1963, at 64. In 2013, fifty years after his death, a memorial to him was placed in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.

Lewis’s early life began in Belfast. His father, Albert James Lewis, was a solicitor; his mother, Florence Augusta Lewis, was the first woman to earn a mathematics degree from Queen’s College Belfast. He had an older brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis, known as Warnie. Lewis was baptized by his maternal grandfather at St Mark’s Church, Dundela, in January 1899.

When his dog Jacksie was killed by a carriage, the four-year-old Lewis insisted on being called Jacksie, later shortening it to Jack—the name friends and family used for the rest of his life. At seven, his family moved to Little Lea in East Belfast. As a boy, he loved Beatrix Potter’s anthropomorphic animals and wrote and illustrated his own animal tales. With Warnie, he created Boxen, a fantasy world run by animals. He read constantly, later remarking that finding a book in his father’s house was as easy as finding a blade of grass in a field.

After his mother died of cancer in 1908, when he was nine, his father sent him to England. He attended Wynyard School in Watford, then Campbell College near his Belfast home, but left both due to health issues. He next went to Cherbourg House, a preparatory school in Malvern, where he abandoned his childhood Christianity and became an atheist. There, he also grew fascinated with European mythology and the occult.

In September 1913, he entered Malvern College for a year. A fellow pupil recalled Lewis as a rebellious, witty mimic who took his studies seriously but little else—a “riotously amusing atheist” with a foul mouth about religion. After leaving, he studied privately with William T. Kirkpatrick, his father’s former tutor.

As a teenager, Lewis was captivated by the songs and legends of what he called “Northernness”—the ancient Icelandic sagas. These stories stirred a deep longing he later named “joy.” He also came to love nature, which reminded him of those northern tales, and vice versa. His writing shifted from Boxen to epic poetry and opera, trying to capture his new fascination with Norse mythology and the natural world. Studying with Kirkpatrick gave him a lasting appreciation for Greek literature and myth.