The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Author Biography)

Author Biography

C. S. Lewis was born November 29, 1898 in a suburb of Belfast, Ireland. His father, Albert, was a successful lawyer. The family house, called Little Lea, had long corridors, empty rooms, and secret nooks in which Lewis and his brother, Warren, played. In the attic, the boys spent many rainy days writing and illustrating stories about imaginary worlds. Sometimes, when their cousin came to visit, the three of them would climb into a black oak wardrobe, hand-carved by Lewis and Warren's grandfather, and sit in the dark while Lewis told stories.

In 1908, Lewis's mother died of cancer. Lewis spent the next six years in and out of boarding schools, and during that time, he grew increasingly antagonistic towards the idea of a benevolent God. Then his father placed him with the private tutor W. T. Kirkpatrick, who provided an education that challenged Lewis's intellect and stimulated his imagination. In 1917, Lewis earned a scholarship to Oxford University, but with England in the midst of World War I, Lewis felt it his duty to enlist. The following year, he was wounded at the Battle of Arras; after that, he returned to Oxford to pursue his studies.

As an Oxford student and eventual fellow of Magdalen College, Lewis became close friends with writers and scholars who altered his worldview and encouraged him to write. This circle of friends, whom Lewis later dubbed the "Inklings," included J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Neville Coghill, and Owen Barfield. Each man was instrumental in showing Lewis the reasonableness of Christianity, but more than anything else, it was Tolkien's views on the relevance of myth to the Christian faith that moved him. Lewis became a Christian at the age of thirty-two.

For fifteen years, the Inklings met regularly in Lewis's sitting room to read aloud from and discuss their own work. In these friendly gatherings, Tolkien first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Lewis, in turn, presented his listeners with The Allegory of Love (1936), The Problem of Pain (1944), The Screwtape Letters (1944), and his science fiction trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). In the late 1940s, Lewis began writing children's stories, but the Inklings no longer provided much creative support. Charles Williams's death in 1945 struck them all very hard, and afterward they met less regularly. Lewis published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950 and went on to write six more Narnia books over the next six years. The final installment of the series, The Last Battle (1956), won the Carnegie Medal. Letters from fans poured onto his desk by the thousands, and Lewis answered every one.

After completing his Narnia series, Lewis wrote Surprised by Joy (1956), an account of his conversion to Christianity. During this time, he married Joy Davidman, a good friend who had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The wedding took place in Joy's hospital room, after which Lewis took her home with him to die. Instead of dying, however, she got better, and the two of them had three years together before her death in 1960. Shortly thereafter, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed (1961). Troubled by declining health himself, Lewis resigned in the summer of 1963. He died on November 22, 1963, one week short of his sixty-fifth birthday.