Clive Staples Lewis

C.S. Lewis (born November 29, 1898, Belfast, Ireland [now in Northern Ireland]—died November 22, 1963, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England) was an Irish-born scholar, novelist, and author of about 40 books, many of them on Christian apologetics, including The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. His works of greatest lasting fame may be The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven children’s books that have become classics of fantasy literature.

Reading and education were valued highly in the Lewis household. Lewis’s father, Albert Lewis, was a solicitor, and his mother, Florence Hamilton Lewis, graduated from the Royal University of Ireland (now Queen’s University Belfast) at a time when it was not common for women to earn degrees. Lewis and his older brother, Warren (“Warnie”), like their parents, were avid readers. Lewis was something of a prodigy: he was reading by age three and by five had begun writing stories about a fantasy land populated by “dressed animals,” influenced by the stories of Beatrix Potter, which were being published as Lewis grew up. Selections of those early stories were collected in Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C.S. Lewis (1985).

• During World War I, Lewis was a popular BBC broadcaster.
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was based on three girls that lived with Lewis during World War I.
• C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were close friends.
• Lewis thought he would never get married
• he Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe took 10 years to write

Celebrate the life of C.S. Lewis with the Riley-Hickingbotham Library, the University Writing Program, the Oral Communication Program, Speer Writing Center and Sigma Tau Delta at Dr. Jack’s Coffeehouse on Nov. 1, from 6:30 p.m. to midnight! There will be snacks and drinks, and the entire first book of the Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, will be read aloud.