Lewis was a close friend ofJ. R. R. Tolkien, the author ofThe Lord of the Rings. Both men served on the English faculty at theUniversity of Oxford and were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as theInklings. According to Lewis's 1955 memoirSurprised by Joy, he was baptized in theChurch of Ireland, but fell away from his faith during adolescence. Lewis returned toAnglicanism at the age of 32, owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an "ordinary layman of theChurch of England".[1] Lewis's faith profoundly affected his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
Lewis wrote more than 30 books which have been translated into over 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The seven books that make upThe Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most, and have been popularized on stage, television, radio and cinema. His philosophical writings are widely cited by Christian scholars from many denominations.
In 1956 Lewis married the American writerJoy Davidman; she died of cancer four years later at the age of 45. Lewis died on 22 November 1963 of kidney failure, at age 64. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis was honoured with a memorial inPoets' Corner inWestminster Abbey.
Life
Childhood
Little Lea, home of the Lewis family from 1905 to 1930
Clive Staples Lewis was born inBelfast inUlster, Ireland (beforepartition), on 29 November 1898.[2] His father was Albert James Lewis (1863–1929),[3] a solicitor whose father Richard Lewis had come to Ireland fromWales during the mid-19th century. Lewis's mother was Florence Augusta Lewisnée Hamilton (1862–1908), known as Flora, the daughter of Thomas Hamilton, aChurch of Ireland priest, and the great-granddaughter of both BishopHugh Hamilton andJohn Staples. She was the first female mathematics graduate to study atQueen's College Belfast.[4] Lewis had an elder brother,Warren Hamilton Lewis (known as "Warnie").[5] He was baptized on 29 January 1899 by his maternal grandfather inSt Mark's Church, Dundela.[6]
When his dog Jacksie was fatally struck by a horse-drawn carriage,[7] the four-year-old Lewis adopted the name Jacksie. At first, he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life.[8] When he was seven, his family moved into "Little Lea", the family home of his childhood, in theStrandtown area ofEast Belfast.[9]
As a boy, Lewis was fascinated withanthropomorphic animals; he fell in love withBeatrix Potter's stories and often wrote and illustrated his own animal tales. Along with his brother Warnie, he created the world ofBoxen, a fantasy land inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read from an early age. His father's house was filled with books; he later wrote that finding something to read was as easy as walking into a field and "finding a new blade of grass".[10]
The New House is almost a major character in my story. I am the product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstair indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books.
Lewis was schooled by private tutors until age nine, when his mother died in 1908 from cancer. His father then sent him to England to live and study atWynyard School inWatford,Hertfordshire. Lewis's brother had enrolled there three years previously. Not long after, the school was closed due to a lack of pupils. Lewis then attendedCampbell College in the east of Belfast about a mile from his home, but left after a few months due torespiratory problems.
He was then sent back to England to the health-resort town ofMalvern,Worcestershire, where he attended thepreparatory school Cherbourg House, which Lewis referred to as "Chartres" in hisautobiography. It was during this time that he abandoned the Christianity he was taught as a child and became anatheist. During this time he also developed a fascination with Europeanmythology and theoccult.[11]
In September 1913 Lewis enrolled atMalvern College, where he remained until the following June. He found the school socially competitive,[12] and some of the fellow pupils of his house, such asDonald Hardman, had mixed feelings about him. Hardman later recalled:
He was a bit of a rebel; he had a wonderful sense of humour and was a past master of mimicry. I think he took his work seriously, but nothing else; never took any interest in games and never played any so for as I can remember unless he had to. ... I met him in Oxford after the war and noticed he had changed, but was staggered to find him the author ofThe Screwtape Letters. When I knew him I can only describe him as a riotously amusing atheist. He really was pretty foul mouthed about it.[13]
As a teenager Lewis was wonderstruck by the songs and legends of what he calledNorthernness, theancient literature of Scandinavia preserved in theIcelandic sagas.[15] These legends intensified an inner longing that he would later call "joy". He also grew to love nature; its beauty reminded him of the stories of the North, and the stories of the North reminded him of the beauties of nature. His teenage writings moved away from the tales of Boxen, and he began experimenting with different art forms such asepic poetry andopera to try to capture his new-found interest inNorse mythology and the natural world.
Studying with Kirkpatrick ("The Great Knock", as Lewis afterward called him) instilled in him a love ofGreek literature andmythology and sharpened his debate and reasoning skills. In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship atUniversity College, Oxford.[16]
Lewis experienced a certaincultural shock on first arriving in England: "No Englishman will be able to understand my first impressions of England," Lewis wrote inSurprised by Joy. "The strangeEnglish accents with which I was surrounded seemed like the voices of demons. But what was worst was the English landscape ... I have made up the quarrel since; but at that moment I conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal."[17]
From boyhood, Lewis had immersed himself inNorse andGreek mythology, and later inIrish mythology andliterature. He also expressed an interest in theIrish language,[18][19] though there is not much evidence that he laboured to learn it. He developed a particular fondness forW. B. Yeats, in part because of Yeats's use of Ireland'sCeltic heritage in poetry. In a letter to a friend, Lewis wrote, "I have here discovered an author exactly after my own heart, whom I am sure you would delight in, W. B. Yeats. He writes plays and poems of rare spirit and beauty about our old Irish mythology."[20]
In 1921 Lewis met Yeats twice, since Yeats had moved to Oxford.[21] Lewis was surprised to find his English peers indifferent to Yeats and theCeltic Revival movement, and wrote: "I am often surprised to find how utterly ignored Yeats is among the men I have met: perhaps his appeal is purely Irish – if so, then thank the gods that I am Irish."[22][23] Early in his career, Lewis considered sending his work to the majorDublin publishers, writing: "If I do ever send my stuff to a publisher, I think I shall tryMaunsel, those Dublin people, and so tack myself definitely onto the Irish school."[20]
Lewis occasionally expressed a somewhattongue-in-cheekchauvinism towards the English. Describing an encounter with a fellow Irishman, he wrote: "Like allIrish people who meet in England, we ended by criticisms on the invincible flippancy and dullness of theAnglo-Saxon race. After all, there is no doubt,ami, that the Irish are the only people: with all their faults, I would not gladly live or die among another folk."[25] Throughout his life he sought out the company of other Irish people living in England[26] and visited Northern Ireland regularly. In 1958 he spent his honeymoon there at the Old Inn,Crawfordsburn,[27] which he called "my Irish life".[28]
Various critics have suggested that it was Lewis's dismay over thesectarian conflict in his native Belfast which led him to eventually adopt such anecumenical brand of Christianity.[29] As one critic has said, Lewis "repeatedly extolled the virtues of all branches of the Christian faith, emphasising a need for unity among Christians around what theCatholic writerG. K. Chesterton called 'Mere Christianity', the core doctrinal beliefs that alldenominations share".[30]
Paul Stevens of theUniversity of Toronto wrote an opinion that "Lewis' mere Christianity masked many of the political prejudices of an old-fashionedUlster Protestant, a native of middle-class Belfast for whom British withdrawal from Northern Ireland even in the 1950s and 1960s was unthinkable."[31]
First World War and Oxford University
The undergraduates of University College,Trinity term 1917. Lewis stands on the right-hand side of the back row.
Lewis entered Oxford in the 1917 summer term, studying atUniversity College, and shortly after, he joined theOfficers' Training Corps at the university as his "most promising route into the army".[32] From there he was drafted into a Cadet Battalion for training.[32][33] After his training he wascommissioned into the 3rd Battalion of theSomerset Light Infantry of theBritish Army as aSecond Lieutenant, and was later transferred to the 1st Battalion of the regiment, then serving in France (he would not remain with the 3rd Battalion as it moved to Northern Ireland). Within months of entering Oxford, he was shipped by the British Army to France to fight in theFirst World War.[14]
On his 19th birthday (29 November 1917) Lewis arrived at the front line in theSomme Valley in France, where he experiencedtrench warfare for the first time.[32][33][34] On 15 April 1918, as 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry assaulted the village of Riez du Vinage in the midst of the German spring offensive, Lewis was wounded and two of his colleagues were killed by aBritishshell falling short of its target.[34] He was depressed and homesick during his convalescence and, upon his recovery in October, he was assigned to duty inAndover, England. He wasdemobilized in December 1918 and soon restarted his studies.[35] In a later letter, Lewis stated that his experience of the horrors of war, along with the loss of his mother and unhappiness in school, were the basis of his pessimism and atheism.[36]
During his army training, Lewis shared a room with another cadet, Edward Courtnay Francis "Paddy" Moore (1898–1918). Maureen Moore, Paddy's sister, said that the two made a mutual pact[38] that if either died during the war, the survivor would take care of both of their families. Paddy was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy had earlier introduced Lewis to his mother, Janie King Moore, and a friendship quickly sprang up between Lewis, who was 18 when they met, and Janie, who was 45. The friendship with Moore was particularly important to Lewis while he was recovering from his wounds in hospital, as his father did not visit him.
Lewis lived with and cared for Moore until she was hospitalized in the late 1940s. He routinely introduced her as his mother, referred to her as such in letters, and developed a deeply affectionate friendship with her. Lewis's own mother had died when he was a child, while his father was distant, demanding, and eccentric.
Speculation regarding their relationship resurfaced with the 1990 publication ofA. N. Wilson's biography of Lewis. Wilson (who never met Lewis) attempted to make a case for their having been lovers for a time. Wilson's biography was not the first to address the question of Lewis's relationship with Moore.George Sayer knew Lewis for 29 years, and he had sought to shed light on the relationship during the period of 14 years before Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In his biographyJack: A Life of C. S. Lewis, he wrote:
Were they lovers?Owen Barfield, who knew Jack well in the 1920s, once said that he thought the likelihood was "fifty-fifty". Although she was twenty-six years older than Jack, she was still a handsome woman, and he was certainly infatuated with her. But it seems very odd, if they were lovers, that he would call her "mother". We know, too, that they did not share the same bedroom. It seems most likely that he was bound to her by the promise he had given to Paddy and that his promise was reinforced by his love for her as his second mother.[39]
Later Sayer changed his mind. In the introduction to the 1997 edition of his biography of Lewis he wrote:
I have had to alter my opinion of Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore. In chapter eight of this book I wrote that I was uncertain about whether they were lovers. Now after conversations with Mrs. Moore's daughter, Maureen, and a consideration of the way in which their bedrooms were arranged at The Kilns, I am quite certain that they were.[40]
However, the romantic nature of the relationship is doubted by other writers; for example, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski write inThe Fellowship that
When—or whether—Lewis commenced an affair with Mrs. Moore remains unclear.[41]
Lewis spoke well of Mrs. Moore throughout his life, saying to his friend George Sayer, "She was generous and taught me to be generous, too." In December 1917, Lewis wrote in a letter to his childhood friend Arthur Greeves that Janie and Greeves were "the two people who matter most to me in the world".
In 1930 Lewis moved intoThe Kilns with his brother Warnie, Mrs. Moore, and her daughterMaureen. The Kilns was a house in the district ofHeadington Quarry on the outskirts of Oxford, now part of the suburb ofRisinghurst. They all contributed financially to the purchase of the house, which eventually passed to Maureen, who by then wasDame Maureen Dunbar, when Warren died in 1973.
Moore haddementia in her later years and was eventually moved into anursing home, where she died in 1951. Lewis visited her every day in this home until her death.
Return to Christianity
Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended theChurch of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15, though he later described his young self as being paradoxically "very angry with God for not existing" and "equally angry with him for creating a world".[42] His early separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and a duty; around this time, he also gained an interest in the occult, as his studies expanded to include such topics.[43] Lewis quotedLucretius (De rerum natura, 5.198–9) as having one of thestrongest arguments for atheism:[44]
Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam Naturam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa
which he translated poetically as follows:
Had God designed the world, it would not be A world so frail and faulty as we see.
(This is a highly poetic, rather than a literal translation. A more literal translation, by William Ellery Leonard,[45] reads: "That in no wise the nature of all things / For us was fashioned by a power divine – / So great the faults it stands encumbered with.")
Lewis's interest in the works of the Scottish writerGeorge MacDonald was part of what turned him from atheism. This can be seen particularly well through this passage in Lewis'sThe Great Divorce, chapter nine, when the semi-autobiographical protagonist meets MacDonald inHeaven:
... I tried, trembling, to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon atLeatherhead Station when I had first bought a copy ofPhantastes (being then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the first sight ofBeatrice had been toDante:Here begins the new life. I started to confess how long that Life had delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard I had tried not to see the true name of the quality which first met me in his books is Holiness.[46]
He eventually returned to Christianity, having been influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friendJ. R. R. Tolkien, whom he seems to have met for the first time on 11 May 1926, as well as the bookThe Everlasting Man byG. K. Chesterton. Lewis vigorously resisted conversion, noting that he was brought into Christianity like aprodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape".[47] He described his last struggle inSurprised by Joy:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen [College, Oxford], night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929[a] I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.[48]
After his conversion totheism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, following a long discussion during a late-night walk alongAddison's Walk with his close friends Tolkien andHugo Dyson. He records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of theChurch of England – somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped that he would join the Catholic Church.[49][page needed]
Lewis was a committedAnglican who upheld a largely orthodoxAnglican theology, though in hisapologetic writings, he made an effort to avoid espousing any one denomination. In his later writings, some believe that he proposed ideas such as purification ofvenial sins after death inpurgatory (The Great Divorce andLetters to Malcolm) andmortal sin (The Screwtape Letters), which are generally considered to be Roman Catholic teachings, although they are also widely held in Anglicanism (particularly inhigh churchAnglo-Catholic circles). Regardless, Lewis considered himself an entirely orthodox Anglican to the end of his life, reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receivecommunion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns.[50]
Second World War
After the outbreak of theSecond World War in 1939, the Lewises tookchild evacuees from London and other cities intoThe Kilns.[51] Lewis was only 40 when the war began, and he tried to re-enter military service, offering to instruct cadets; however, his offer was not accepted. He rejected the recruiting office's suggestion of writing columns for theMinistry of Information in the press, as he did not want to "write lies"[52] to deceive the enemy. He later served in the localHome Guard in Oxford.[52]
From 1941 to 1943 Lewis spoke on religious programmes broadcast by theBBC from London while the city was under periodicair raids.[53] These broadcasts were appreciated by civilians and servicemen at that stage. For example,Air Chief Marshal Sir Donald Hardman wrote:
"The war, the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless. We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis provided just that."[54]
The youthfulAlistair Cooke was less impressed, and in 1944 described "the alarming vogue of Mr. C.S. Lewis" as an example of how wartime tends to "spawn so many quack religions and Messiahs".[55] The broadcasts were anthologized inMere Christianity. From 1941 Lewis was occupied at his summer holiday weekends visitingRoyal Air Force stations to speak on his faith, invited byChaplain-in-ChiefMaurice Edwards.[56]
It was also during the same wartime period that Lewis was invited to become first President of theOxford Socratic Club in January 1942,[57] a position he enthusiastically held until he resigned on appointment to theUniversity of Cambridge in 1954.[58]
She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. Perhaps more.
In his later life Lewis corresponded withJoy Davidman Gresham, an American writer ofJewish background, a former member of theCommunist Party USA and a convert from atheism to Christianity. She was separated from her alcoholic and abusive husband, the novelistWilliam L. Gresham, and came to England with her two sons, David andDouglas.[62] Lewis at first regarded her as an agreeable intellectual companion and personal friend, and it was on this level that he agreed to enter into acivil marriage contract with her so that she could continue to live in Britain.[63] They were married at theregister office, 42St Giles', Oxford, on 23 April 1956.[64][65] Lewis's brother Warren wrote: "For Jack the attraction was at first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman whom he had met ... who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humour and a sense of fun."[62] After complaining of a painful hip, she was diagnosed with terminalbone cancer, and the relationship developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. Since she was divorced, this was not straightforward in theChurch of England at the time, but a friend, the Rev. Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at her bed in theChurchill Hospital on 21 March 1957.[66]
Gresham's cancer soon went intoremission, and the couple lived together as a family withWarren Lewis until 1960, when her cancer recurred. She died on 13 July 1960. Earlier that year, the couple took a brief holiday in Greece and theAegean; Lewis was fond of walking but not of travel, and this marked his only crossing of theEnglish Channel after 1918. Lewis's bookA Grief Observed describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that he originally released it under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. Ironically, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief. After Lewis's death, his authorship was made public byFaber, with the permission of theexecutors.[67]
Lewis had adopted Gresham's two sons and continued to raise them after her death.Douglas Gresham is a Christian like Lewis and his mother,[68] while David Gresham turned to his mother's ancestral faith, becomingOrthodox Jewish in his beliefs. His mother's writings had featured the Jews in an unsympathetic manner, particularly onshechita (ritual slaughter). David informed Lewis that he was going to become ashohet, a ritual slaughterer, to present this type of Jewish religiousfunctionary to the world in a more favourable light. In a 2005 interview Douglas Gresham acknowledged that he and his brother were not close, although they had corresponded via email.[69]
David died on 25 December 2014.[70] In 2020 Douglas revealed that his brother had died at a Swissmental hospital, and that when David was a young man he had been diagnosed withparanoid schizophrenia.[71]
In early June 1961 Lewis became infected with recurrentnephritis which progressed to chronic low-gradesepsis. His illness caused him to miss the autumn term at Cambridge, though his health gradually began improving in 1962 and he returned that April. His health continued to improve and, according to his friendGeorge Sayer, Lewis was fully himself by early 1963.
On 15 July that year Lewis fell ill and was admitted to the hospital; he had a heart attack at 5:00 pm the next day and lapsed into a coma, but unexpectedly woke the following day at 2:00 pm. After he was discharged from the hospital, Lewis returned to the Kilns, though he was too ill to return to work. As a result, he resigned from his post at Cambridge in August 1963.
Lewis's condition continued to decline, and he was diagnosed withend-stage kidney failure in mid-November. He collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm on 22 November, at age 64, and died a few minutes later.[72] He is buried in the churchyard ofHoly Trinity Church,Headington, Oxford.[73] His brotherWarren died on 9 April 1973 and was buried in the same grave.[74]
The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford where the Inklings met on Tuesday mornings in 1939
Lewis was commissioned to write the volumeEnglish Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama) for the Oxford History of English Literature.[80] His bookA Preface to Paradise Lost[83] is still cited as a criticism of that work. His lastacademic work,The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964), is a summary of the medieval world view, a reference to the "discarded image" of the cosmos.[84]
Lewis was a prolific writer, and his circle of literary friends became an informal discussion society known as the "Inklings", includingJ. R. R. Tolkien,Nevill Coghill,Lord David Cecil,Charles Williams,Owen Barfield and his brotherWarren Lewis. Glyer points to December 1929 as the Inklings' beginning date.[85] Lewis's friendship with Coghill and Tolkien grew during their time as members of the Kolbítar, an Old Norse reading group that Tolkien founded and which ended around the time of the inception of the Inklings.[86] At Oxford, he was the tutor of the poetJohn Betjeman, the theatre-criticKenneth Tynan, the Catholic priestBede Griffiths, the writerRoger Lancelyn Green and theSufi scholarMartin Lings, among many other undergraduates. The religious and conservative Betjeman detested Lewis, whereas theanti-establishment Tynan retained a lifelong admiration for him.[87][page needed]
When I began teaching for the English Faculty, I made two other friends, both Christians (these queer people seemed now to pop up on every side) who were later to give me much help in getting over the last stile. They were HVV Dyson ... and JRR Tolkien. Friendship with the latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust aPapist, and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust aphilologist. Tolkien was both.[88]
Novelist
In addition to his scholarly work, Lewis wrote several popular novels, including the science fictionSpace Trilogy for adults and theNarnia fantasies for children. Most deal implicitly with Christian themes such as sin, humanity'sfall from grace, and redemption.[89][90]
His first novel after becoming a Christian wasThe Pilgrim's Regress (1933), which depicted his journey to Christianity in the allegorical style ofJohn Bunyan'sThe Pilgrim's Progress. The book was poorly received by critics at the time,[24] although DavidMartyn Lloyd-Jones, one of Lewis's contemporaries at Oxford, gave him much-valued encouragement. Asked by Lloyd-Jones when he would write another book, Lewis replied, "When I understand the meaning of prayer."[91][page needed]
TheSpace Trilogy (also called theCosmic Trilogy orRansom Trilogy) dealt with what Lewis saw as the dehumanizing trends in contemporary science fiction. The first book,Out of the Silent Planet, was apparently written following a conversation with his friend Tolkien about these trends. Lewis agreed to write a "space travel" story and Tolkien a "time travel" one, but Tolkien never completed "The Lost Road", linking hisMiddle-earth to the modern world. Lewis's main characterElwin Ransom is based in part on Tolkien, a fact to which Tolkien alludes in his letters.[92]
The second novel,Perelandra, depicts a newGarden of Eden on the planet Venus, a newAdam and Eve, and a new "serpent figure" to tempt Eve. The story can be seen as an account of what might have happened if the terrestrial Adam had defeated the serpent and avoided theFall of Man, with Ransom intervening in the novel to "ransom" the new Adam and Eve from the deceptions of the enemy. The third novel,That Hideous Strength, develops the theme of nihilistic science threatening traditional human values, embodied in Arthurian legend.[citation needed]
Many ideas in the trilogy, particularly opposition to dehumanization as portrayed in the third book, are presented more formally inThe Abolition of Man, based on a series of lectures by Lewis atDurham University in 1943. Lewis stayed in Durham, where he says he was overwhelmed by the magnificence ofthe cathedral.That Hideous Strength is in fact set in the environs of "Edgestow" university, a small English university like Durham, though Lewis disclaims any other resemblance between the two.[93]
Walter Hooper, Lewis's literary executor, discovered a fragment of another science-fiction novel apparently written by Lewis calledThe Dark Tower. Ransom appears in the story but it is not clear whether the book was intended as part of the same series of novels. The manuscript was eventually published in 1977, though Lewis scholarKathryn Lindskoog doubts its authenticity.[94]
The Mountains of Mourne inspired Lewis to writeThe Chronicles of Narnia. About them, Lewis wrote "I have seen landscapes ... which, under a particular light, make me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge."[95]
The Chronicles of Narnia, considered a classic of children's literature, is a series of seven fantasy novels. Written between 1949 and 1954 and illustrated byPauline Baynes, the series is Lewis's most popular work, having sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages (Kelly 2006) (Guthmann 2005). It has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage andcinema.[96] In 1956, the final novel in the series,The Last Battle, won theCarnegie Medal.[97]
The books contain Christian ideas intended to be easily accessible to young readers. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters fromGreek andRoman mythology, as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales.[98][99]
Lewis's last novel,Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, was published in 1956.[100] Although Lewis called it "far and away my best book", it was not as well-reviewed as his previous work.[100]
Other works
Lewis wrote several works onHeaven andHell. One of these,The Great Divorce, is a short novella in which a few residents of Hell take a bus ride to Heaven, where they are met by people who dwell there. The proposition is that they can stay if they choose, in which case they can call the place where they had come from "Purgatory", instead of "Hell", but many find it not to their taste. The title is a reference toWilliam Blake'sThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a concept that Lewis found a "disastrous error". This work deliberately echoes two other more famous works with a similar theme: theDivine Comedy ofDante Alighieri, and Bunyan'sThe Pilgrim's Progress.
Another short work,The Screwtape Letters, which he dedicated to Tolkien, consists of letters of advice from the seniordemon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood on the best ways to tempt a particular human and secure hisdamnation.[101] Lewis's last novel wasTill We Have Faces, which he thought of as his most mature and masterly work of fiction but which was never a popular success. It is a retelling of the myth ofCupid and Psyche from the unusual perspective of Psyche's sister. It is deeply concerned with religious ideas, but the setting is entirelypagan, and the connections with specific Christian beliefs are left implicit.[102]
Before Lewis's conversion to Christianity, he published two books:Spirits in Bondage, a collection of poems, andDymer, a singlenarrative poem. Both were published under the pen name Clive Hamilton. Other narrative poems have since been published posthumously, includingLauncelot,The Nameless Isle, andThe Queen of Drum.[103]
In 2009 a partial draft was discovered ofLanguage and Human Nature, which Lewis had begun co-writing with J. R. R. Tolkien, but which was never completed.[105]
In 2024 an original poem was discovered in a collection of documents in Special Collections at theUniversity of Leeds.[106] Its Old English title, "Mód Þrýþe Ne Wæg", is not easily translated into modern English and references the epic poemBeowulf.[107] The poem was addressed to the professor of EnglishEric Valentine Gordon and his wife Dr Ida Gordon.[106] It was written under the pen name Nat Whilk, meaning "someone" in Old English.[106]
Christian apologist
Lewis is also regarded by many as one of the most influentialChristian apologists of his time, in addition to his career as an English professor and an author of fiction.Mere Christianity was voted best book of the 20th century byChristianity Today in 2000.[108] He has been called "The Apostle to the Skeptics" due to his approach to religious belief as a sceptic, and his following conversion.[109]
Lewis was very interested in presenting anargument from reason againstmetaphysical naturalism and for theexistence of God.Mere Christianity,The Problem of Pain, andMiracles were all concerned, to one degree or another, with refuting popular objections to Christianity, such as the question, "How could a good God allow pain to exist in the world?" He also became a popular lecturer and broadcaster, and some of his writing originated as scripts for radio talks or lectures (including much ofMere Christianity).[110][page needed]
According to George Sayer, losing a 1948 debate withElizabeth Anscombe, also a Christian, led Lewis to re-evaluate his role as an apologist, and his future works concentrated on devotional literature and children's books.[111] Anscombe had a completely different recollection of the debate's outcome and its emotional effect on Lewis.[111] Victor Reppert also disputes Sayer, listing some of Lewis's post-1948 apologetic publications, including the second and revised edition of hisMiracles in 1960, in which Lewis addressed Anscombe's criticism.[112] Noteworthy too is Roger Teichman's suggestion inThe Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe that the intellectual impact of Anscombe's paper on Lewis's philosophical self-confidence should not be over-rated: "... it seems unlikely that he felt as irretrievably crushed as some of his acquaintances have made out; the episode is probably an inflated legend, in the same category as the affair ofWittgenstein's Poker. Certainly, Anscombe herself believed that Lewis's argument, though flawed, was getting at something very important; she thought that this came out more in the improved version of it that Lewis presented in a subsequent edition ofMiracles – though that version also had 'much to criticize in it'."[113]
Lewis wrote an autobiography titledSurprised by Joy, which places special emphasis on his own conversion.[14] He also wrote many essays and public speeches on Christian belief, many of which were collected inGod in the Dock andThe Weight of Glory and Other Addresses.[114][115]
His most famous works, theChronicles of Narnia, contain many strong Christian messages and are often consideredallegory. Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs. Hook in December 1958:
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character inThe Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, "What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?" This is not allegory at all.[116]
Prior to his conversion, Lewis used the word "Moslem" to refer to Muslims, adherents of Islam; following his conversion, however, he started using "Mohammedans" and described Islam as a Christian heresy rather than an independent religion.[117]
In a much-cited passage fromMere Christianity, Lewis challenged the view that Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. He argued that Jesus made several implicit claims to divinity, which would logically exclude that claim:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.[118]
Although this argument is sometimes called "Lewis's trilemma", Lewis did not invent it but rather developed and popularized it. It has also been used by the Christian apologistJosh McDowell in his bookMore Than a Carpenter.[119] It has been widely repeated in Christian apologetic literature but largely ignored by professional theologians and biblical scholars.[120]
Lewis's Christian apologetics, and this argument in particular, have been criticized. Philosopher John Beversluis described Lewis's arguments as "textually careless and theologically unreliable",[121] and this particular argument as logically unsound and an example of afalse dilemma.[122] TheAnglican New Testament scholarN. T. Wright criticizes Lewis for failing to recognize the significance of Jesus's Jewish identity and setting – an oversight which "at best, drastically short-circuits the argument" and which lays Lewis open to criticism that his argument "doesn't work as history, and it backfires dangerously when historical critics question his reading of the gospels", although he argues that this "doesn't undermine the eventual claim".[123]
One of the main theses in Lewis's apologia is that there is a common morality known throughout humanity, which he calls "natural law". In the first five chapters ofMere Christianity, Lewis discusses the idea that people have a standard of behaviour to which they expect people to adhere. Lewis claims that people all over the earth know what this law is and when they break it. He goes on to claim that there must be someone or something behind such a universal set of principles.[124]
These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.[125]
Lewis also portrays Universal Morality in his works of fiction. InThe Chronicles of Narnia he describes Universal Morality as the "deep magic" which everyone knew.[126]
In the second chapter ofMere Christianity Lewis recognizes that "many people find it difficult to understand what this Law of Human Nature ... is." And he responds first to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply our herd instinct" and second to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply a social convention". In responding to the second idea Lewis notes that people often complain that one set of moral ideas is better than another, but that this actually argues for there existing some "Real Morality" to which they are comparing other moralities. Finally, he notes that sometimes differences in moral codes are exaggerated by people who confuse differences in beliefs about morality with differences in beliefs about facts:
I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did – if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthyquislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.[127]
Lewis also had fairly progressive views on the topic of "animal morality", in particular the suffering of animals, as is evidenced by several of his essays: most notably,On Vivisection[128] and "On the Pains of Animals".[129][130]
Lewis eschewed political involvement and partisan politics, took little interest in transitory political issues, and held many politicians in disdain. He refused a knighthood for fear that his detractors might then use it to accuse him of holding a political viewpoint, and he saw his role as a Christian apologist. His worldview was Christian, but he also did not believe in establishment of Christian parties. He avoided the political sphere, although he was not ignorant of it.[131]: 238 He did not see himself as a political philosopher, but his work,The Abolition of Man (1943) defends objective value and the concept of natural law. Lewis referred to this work as almost his own favourite, although he felt it had been largely ignored.[132]: 3 The Abolition of Man was not presented as something new. Instead, he paid attention to ideas, with the intent of recovering them. InThe Abolition of Man, "Lewis offered the postmodern world a vision of reality that could make sense of our lived moral experiences, and he put forth a powerful defense of natural law as a necessary basis for "the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery".[131]: 4876
Legacy
Ross Wilson's statue of Professor Kirke (Digory) in front of the wardrobe fromThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in East Belfast
Lewis continues to attract a wide readership. In 2008The Times ranked him eleventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[133] Readers of his fiction are often unaware of what Lewis considered the Christian themes of his works. His Christian apologetics are read and quoted by members of manyChristian denominations.[134] In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis joined some of Britain's greatest writers recognized atPoets' Corner,Westminster Abbey.[135] The dedication service, at noon on 22 November 2013, included a reading fromThe Last Battle byDouglas Gresham, younger stepson of Lewis. Flowers were laid byWalter Hooper, trustee and literary advisor to the Lewis Estate. An address was delivered by the former Archbishop of CanterburyRowan Williams.[136][page needed] The floor stone inscription is a quotation from an address by Lewis:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.[136]
Many books have been inspired by Lewis, includingA Severe Mercy by his correspondent and friendSheldon Vanauken.The Chronicles of Narnia has been particularly influential. Modern children's literature has been more or less influenced by Lewis's series, such asDaniel Handler'sA Series of Unfortunate Events,Eoin Colfer'sArtemis Fowl,Philip Pullman'sHis Dark Materials andJ. K. Rowling'sHarry Potter.[143] Pullman is an atheist and is known to be sharply critical of Lewis's work,[144] accusing Lewis of featuring religious propaganda, misogyny, racism, and emotional sadism in his books.[145] However, he has also modestly praisedThe Chronicles of Narnia for being a "more serious" work of literature in comparison with Tolkien's "trivial"The Lord of the Rings.[146] Authors of adult fantasy literature such asTim Powers have also testified to being influenced by Lewis's work.[147]
Most of Lewis's posthumous work has been edited by his literary executorWalter Hooper.Kathryn Lindskoog, an independent Lewis scholar, argued that Hooper's scholarship is not reliable and that he has made false statements and attributed forged works to Lewis.[148] Lewis's stepson,Douglas Gresham, denies the forgery claims, saying that "[t]he whole controversy thing was engineered for very personal reasons ... Her fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited."[149]
A bronze statue of Lewis's character Digory fromThe Magician's Nephew stands in Belfast'sHolywood Arches in front of the Holywood Road Library.[150]
Several C. S. Lewis Societies exist around the world, including one which was founded in Oxford in 1982. The C.S. Lewis Society at the University of Oxford meets atPusey House during term time to discuss papers on the life and works of Lewis and the other Inklings, and generally appreciate all things Lewisian.[151]
^Yeats's appeal wasn't exclusively Irish; he was also a major "magical opponent" of famed English occultistAleister Crowley, as noted extensively throughout Lawrence Sutin'sDo what thou wilt: a life of Aleister Crowley. New York: MacMillan (St. Martins). cf. pp. 56–78.
^Paul Stevens, review of "Reforming Empire: Protestant Colonialism and Conscience in British Literature" by Christopher Hodgkins,Modern Philology, Vol. 103, Issue 1 (August 2005), pp. 137–38, citing Humphrey Carpenter,The Inklings (London: Allen & Unwin, 1978), pp. 50–52, 206–207.
^Nicholi, Armand (2003).The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life. Free Press. p. 4.ISBN978-0743247856.
^Lewis, C. S. (1977) [1936].The Allegory of Love. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
^Lewis, C. S. (1961) [1942].A Preface to "Paradise Lost": Being the Ballard Matthews Lectures, Delivered at University College, North Wales, 1941. London: Oxford University Press.
^Lewis, C. S. (1994) [1964].The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
^abDyer, Justin Buckley; Watson, Micah Joel (2016).C.S. Lewis on politics and the natural law (kindle ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1107108240.
Fiddes, Paul (1990). "C. S. Lewis the myth-maker". In Andrew Walker; James Patrick (eds.).A Christian for all Christians: essays in honour of C. S. Lewis. London: Hodder & Stoughton. pp. 132–55.ISBN978-0340513842. [reprinted asRumours of Heaven: essays in celebration of C. S. Lewis. Guildford: Eagle. 1998.ISBN978-0863472503.]
Lewis, C. S. (1993). Hooper, Walter (ed.).All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis 1922–27. London: HarperCollins.
Lewis, C. S. (2000).Collected Letters. Vol. 1: Family Letters,1905–1931. London: HarperCollins..
Lewis, C. S. (2004) [2000]. Hooper, Walter (ed.).The Collected Letters. Vol. 1: Family Letters,1905–1931. New York: HarperCollins.ISBN978-0-06-072763-5.
Lucretius, Titus (1916) [Composed 1st century BCE].De Rerum Natura. Translated by Leonard, William Ellery. V:200–203.Archived from the original on 25 February 2021. Retrieved20 February 2021.
Barker, Dan (1992).Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. Madison: Freedom from Religion Foundation.ISBN978-1-877733-07-9.
Beversluis, John (1985),C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. Grand Rapids: EerdmansISBN0-8028-0046-7
Bresland, Ronald W. (1999),The Backward Glance: C. S. Lewis and Ireland. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies atQueen's University of Belfast.
Brown, Devin (2013),A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. S. Lewis. Grand Rapids: Brazos PressISBN978-1587433351
Christopher, Joe R. &Joan K. Ostling (1972),C. S. Lewis: An Annotated Checklist of Writings About Him and His Works. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, n.d.ISBN0-87338-138-6
Como, James (1998),Branches to Heaven: The Geniuses of C. S. Lewis. Spence
Como, James (2006),Remembering C. S. Lewis (3rd edn. ofC. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table). Ignatius Press
Connolly, Sean (2007),Inklings of Heaven: C. S. Lewis and Eschatology. Gracewing.ISBN978-0-85244-659-1
Coren, Michael (1994),The Man Who Created Narnia: The Story of C. S. Lewis. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, reprint edition 1996 (First published 1994 in Canada by Lester Publishing Limited).ISBN0-8028-3822-7
Duriez, Colin (2015),Bedeviled: Lewis, Tolkien and the Shadow of Evil. InterVarsity PressISBN0-8308-3417-6
Duriez, Colin & David Porter (2001),The Inklings Handbook: The Lives, Thought and Writings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Their Friends. London: Azure.ISBN1-902694-13-9
Edwards, Bruce L. (1986).A Rhetoric of Reading: C. S. Lewis's Defense of Western Literacy. Center for the Study of Christian Values in Literature.ISBN978-0-939555-01-7.
Edwards, Bruce L., ed. (1988).The Taste of the Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer. The Popular Press.ISBN978-0-87972-407-8.
Edwards, Bruce L. (2005),Further Up and Further In: Understanding C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Broadman and Holman.ISBN0-8054-4070-4
Edwards, Bruce L. (2005),Not a Tame Lion: The Spiritual World of Narnia. Tyndale.ISBN1-4143-0381-5
Edwards, Bruce L. (2007). Bruce L. Edwards (ed.).C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy. Praeger Perspectives.ISBN978-0-275-99116-6.
Glyer, Diana (2007).The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press.ISBN978-0-87338-890-0.
Mills, David (ed) (1998)The Pilgrim's Guide: C. S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.ISBN0-8028-4689-0
Moynihan, Martin, ed. (1998).The Latin Letters of C. S. Lewis: C. S. Lewis & DonGiovanni Calabria. Indiana: St. Augustine's Press.ISBN978-1-890-31834-5.
Mühling, Markus (2005).A Theological Journey into Narnia: An Analysis of the Message Beneath the Text. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.ISBN978-3-525-60423-6.
Peters, Thomas C. (1998),Simply C. S. Lewis: A Beginner's Guide to His Life and Works. Kingsway Publications.ISBN0-85476-762-2
Phillips, Justin (2003),C. S. Lewis at the BBC: Messages of Hope in the Darkness of War. Marshall Pickering.ISBN0-00-710437-5
Poe, Harry Lee & Rebecca Whitten Poe (eds) (2006),C. S. Lewis Remembered: Collected Reflections of Students, Friends & Colleagues. Zondervan.ISBN978-0-310-26509-2
Reppert, Victor (2003),C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason. InterVarsity Press.ISBN0-8308-2732-3
Schakel, Peter J. (2002),Imagination and the Arts in C. S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds. University of Missouri Press.ISBN0-8262-1407-X
Schakel, Peter J. (ed.) (1977),The Longing for a Form: Essays on the Fiction of C. S. Lewis. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press.ISBN0-87338-204-8
Schofield, Stephen (1983),In Search of C. S. Lewis. Bridge Logos Pub.ISBN0-88270-544-X
Schultz, Jeffrey D. & John G. West Jr. (eds) (1998),The C. S. Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia. Zondervan Publishing House.ISBN0-310-21538-2
Schwartz, Sanford (2009),C. S. Lewis on the Final Frontier: Science and the Supernatural in the Space Trilogy. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-537472-8.
Tennyson, G. B. (ed.) (1989),Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis. Wesleyan University PressISBN0-8195-5233-X
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