C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Born
Clive Staples Lewis
29 November 1898
Belfast, Ireland
Died
22 November 1963 (1963-11-23)
(aged 64)
Oxford, England
Occupation Novelist, scholar, broadcaster
Genres
Fantasy, Science fiction,
Christian apologetics, children’s
literature
Notable
work(s)
The Chronicles of Narnia
Mere Christianity
The Allegory of Love
The Screwtape Letters
The Space Trilogy
Till We Have Faces
Influences
Aristotle, Arthur Balfour, Beatrix
Potter, Bible, Chaucer, Dante,
Rudolf Otto,George MacDonald,
G. K. Chesterton, Lord Dunsany,
H. G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard,
John Milton, J. R. R. Tolkien,
Plato, William Blake, Medieval
Literature, Irish Mythology,
Norse Mythology, Greek
Mythology, William Butler Yeats
Influenced
Christopher Derrick, Stephen R.
Donaldson, Neil Gaiman, Peter
Kreeft, J. I. Packer, John Piper, J.
K. Rowling, Ravi Zacharias,
Clive Staples Lewis
Venerated in
Episcopal Church USA
Feast
22 November
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 –
22 November 1963), commonly referred to as
C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and
family as Jack, was a novelist, academic, me-
dievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theolo-
gian and Christian apologist. He is also
known
for his
fiction,
especially The
Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia
and The Space Trilogy.
Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolki-
en, the author of The Lord of the Rings. Both
authors were leading figures in the English
faculty at Oxford University and in the in-
formal Oxford literary group known as the
"Inklings". According to his memoir Sur-
prised by Joy, Lewis had been baptised in the
Church of Ireland at birth, but fell away from
his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the
influence of Tolkien and other friends, at
about the age of 30, Lewis returned to Chris-
tianity, becoming "a very ordinary layman of
the Church of England" [1]. His conversion
had a profound effect on his work, and his
wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of
Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
In 1956, he married the American writer
Joy Gresha