C.S. LEWIS:

Clive Staples (“Jack”) Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on November 29, 1898. He was the second son of Albert Lewis, a lawyer, and Flora Hamilton Lewis, his elder brother being Warren Hamilton Lewis (“Warrie”). The Lewis family was comfortably well off and Jack led a relatively happy early childhood, especially playing with Warrie in the large family home (“Little Lea”) and its overgrown garden. The Lewis house contained a library crammed with books, including two of Jack’s favourites; Treasure Island and The Secret Garden.

Jack’s mother died of cancer in 1908, when he was 10 years old and within a month of her death, Warrie and Jack were sent to boarding school in England. Jack hated the school, but fortunately it closed in 1910 and Jack returned to Ireland.

In 1911 Jack was sent to Cherbourg School in England, where he learned to love poetry, especially Homer and Virgil. He also developed an interest in modern languages, mastering French, German and Italian. In 1914 Lewis left school to be tutored privately by a family friend, William Kirkpatrick, before enlisting in the British Army at the outbreak of WWI. Lewis completed his military training and was shipped to the frontline near Arras in France.

It was during the war that Lewis’ first published piece appeared in a British newspaper, called Death in Battle. Lewis gradually lost his idealism and brotherly sense of love during WWI and after being wounded by an exploding shell in April 1918, he was sent home to recuperate. Lewis returned to University College, Oxford, where he excelled in all his studies, and in 1919 he published two volumes of poetry, Spirits in Bondage, at the age of 23 years old.

Lewis was appointed a teacher at Magdalen College in 1925, and in the following year he published his first book length manuscript, a poem called Dymer, under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton. Neither publications were critically successful, convincing Lewis that he would never become an accomplished poet; subsequently he turned his attention to literary history.

Lewis came to a turning point in his spiritual life in 1929 whilst riding on a double-decker bus in early summer. Lewis suddenly felt that he had no choice but to acknowledge a belief in God, but he would not become a Christian until a few years later.

A feature of Lewis’ life in Oxford in the 1930’s and 40’s was regular gatherings of the Inklings. This group of Lewis’ friends and colleagues, including J.R.R. Tolkien and his brother Warrie, often met to read and discuss their written works. The group continued to meet regularly for 16 years up to 1949. During 1931, Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson had a long, deep conversation about Christianity with the result that on the next day Lewis accepted Christ. Lewis published his first major work, The Pilgrim’s Regress, an allegorical tale of his own journey to belief in Christ in 1933. Other works followed that won him acclaim as a writer of academic works and popular novels-

The Allegory of Love (1936): a history of love and literature from early Middle Ages to Shakespeare’s time

Out of the Silent Planet (1938):the first of a trilogy of science fiction novels, the hero of which is loosely based on J.R.R. Tolkien

In 1941 Lewis began a series of live radio talks on Christian and moral issues for the BBC. These wartime talks greatly increased Lewis’ popularity and were eventually collected and published under the title Mere Christianity in 1943. The Screwtape Letters of 1942 was originally published in the Church of England newspaper, The Guardian, in weekly instalments.

Perelandra, a new version of Paradise Lost set in Venus, was also published in 1943, as the second of Lewis’ science fiction trilogy. This followed Out of the Silent Planet, with the final in the series, That Hideous Strength, being released in 1945. Lewis’ most notable critical and commercial success, however, was his seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia, which he published in single volumes from 1950 to 1956.

Lewis’ own favourite fictional work, Till We Have Faces, his last imaginative work, published in 1956, was retelling of the Cupid/Psyche myth, but has never achieved critical recognition. In the midst of his prolific output, Lewis took time to write his spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy, published in 1955. Never having children of his own, Lewis married Joy Gresham in 1956 and her 2 sons from a previous marriage lived with Lewis until Joy’s death from cancer in 1960. After Joy’s death, Lewis continued to write, publishing another four books before his death on November 22, 1963.

Selective Bibliography of C.S. Lewis:

Autobiography

A Grief Observed (1961)
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (1955)

Children’s Fiction

The Horse and His Boy (1954)
The Last Battle: A Story for Children (1956)
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: A Story for Children (1950)
The Magician’s Nephew (1955)
Price Caspian: The Return to Narnia (1951)
The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” (1952)
The Silver Chair (1953)  

Adult Fiction

“The Dark Tower” and Other Stories (1977) ed by Walter Hopper
The Great Divorce: A Drama (1945)
Out of the Silent Planet (1938)
Perelandra: A Novel (1943)
The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and        Romanticism (1933)     
The Screwtape Letters (1942) [with Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1961)]
That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups (1945)
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956)

Non-Fiction

The Abolition of Man; or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to     the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (1943)
The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936)
Beyond Personality: The Christian Idea of God (1944)
Broadcast Talks [in America, The Case for Christianity] (1942)
Christian Behaviour: A Further Series of Broadcast Talks (1943)
The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964)
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (1954)
An Experiment in Criticism (1961)
The Four Loves (1960)
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964)
Mere Christianity (1952)
Miracles: A Preliminary Study (1947)
The Personal Heresy: A Controversy (1939), with E.N.W. Tillyard
A Preface to “Paradise Lost” (1942)
The Problem of Pain (1940)
Reflections on the Psalms (1958)
Spenser’s Images of Life (1967) ed by Alasdair Fowler
Studies in Words (1960)  

Letters

Letters to an American Lady (1967) ed by Clyde S. Kilby
Letters to Children (1985) ed by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead
Letters of C.S. Lewis (1966) ed by Warren H. Lewis
They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, 1914-1963 (1979) ed by Walter Hooper  

Essay Collections by C.S. Lewis

Christian Reflections (1967) ed by Walter Hooper
Fern-Seed and Elephants and Other Essays on Christianity (1975) ed by Walter Hooper
God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (1970) [Undeceptions in England] ed by Walter Hooper
Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966) ed by Walter Hooper
Present Concerns (1986) ed by Walter Hooper
Rehabilitations and Other Essays (1939)
Selected Literary Essays (1969) ed by walter Hooper
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1966) ed by Walter Hooper
They Asked for a Paper, Papers and Addresses (1962)
Transposition and Other Addresses (1949) [The Weight of Glory in America]
The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (1980) expanded and edited by Walter Hooper
The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (1960)  

Poetry

Dymer (1926) [originally published under pseudonym Clive Hamilton]
Narrative Poems (1969) ed by Walter Hooper
Poems (1964) ed by walter Hooper
Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics (1919) [originally published under pseudonym Clive Hamilton]  

Books Edited by C.S. Lewis

Arthurian Torso (1948)
Essays Presented to Charles Williams (1947)
George MacDonald: An Anthology (1946)

C.S. Lewis presents the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honour in contemporary society. This book is one of the most debated of Lewis' extraordinary works.

This essay collection discusses BIblical criticism and is particularly interesting for; "Religion and Rocketry", which discusses the theological implications of the existence of aliens, for "Membership", which explores the true meaning of membership in the body of Christ, and "On Forgiveness", which has become increasingly important in light of the horrors of recent wars. 

The writer, in a dream, boards a bus on a drizzly afternoon and embarks on an incredible voyage through Heaven and Hell. He meets a host of supernatural beings far removed from his expectations and comes to significant realizations about the ultimate consequences of everyday behaviour.

Written after the death of Lewis' wife, this book represents his most honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss.

In the 1940's, Lewis was invited to give a series of radio lectures addressing the central issues of Christianity. The lectures were published as three books and subsequently combines as Mere Christianity. 

C.S. Lewis shows that a Christian must not only accept, but rejoice in miracles as a testimony of the unique personal involvement of God in creation.

Lewis offers answers to the questions of suffering and shares his hope and wisdom to help heal a world hungering for a true understanding of human nature.

Lewis gives us the correspondence of the worldly-wise old devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. 

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Revised 10 December 2005