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C.S. Lewis, more than Narnia

A professor, a storyteller, a believer who doubted, and a loyal friend: C.S. Lewis on a single page.

The professor

Un bureau de professeur d'Oxford dans les années 1940
  • 1898-1963, some forty books.
  • Storyteller, satirist, apologist, scholar, autobiographer.
  • A large part of his royalties went to charities.

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was born in Belfast and died in Oxford. He wrote some forty books in almost every kind: poetry, literary criticism, science fiction, stories for children, essays on faith, autobiography, a journal of grief. He is still read all over the world, and his books still sell in their millions.

Five ways in

  1. The storyteller: the seven Chronicles of Narnia, the Space Trilogy, Till We Have Faces, which he held to be his best novel.
  2. The satirist: The Screwtape Letters, the letters of an old demon to his nephew, and The Great Divorce, a bus that runs between hell and heaven.
  3. The apologist: Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, books in which a former atheist explains the faith with a professor's logic.
  4. The scholar: The Allegory of Love, The Discarded Image, standard works on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
  5. The wounded man: Surprised by Joy (his conversion) and A Grief Observed (his wife's death), two books of rare honesty.

What is less well known

  • He loved long walks, pubs, bathing in the river, and talk until dawn.
  • He himself answered hundreds of letters from children and from strangers.
  • He distrusted 'chronological snobbery', the idea that a thought is false because it is old.
  • He quietly gave a large part of his royalties to charities.
  • He died on the same day as John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley.

All our pages on Lewis

His life: Biography of C.S. Lewis (1): from Belfast to Oxford, 1898-1931 · Biography of C.S. Lewis (2): from the Inklings to Narnia, 1932-1963 · Chronology of the life of C.S. Lewis · Joy Davidman and A Grief Observed · Lewis on the French side: the war, the translations, the readers.

His friends: The Inklings, a literary club · J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

His work: Bibliography of C.S. Lewis · What to read of Lewis after Narnia · Quotations from C.S. Lewis.

Lewis and Narnia: How Lewis created Narnia · Pauline Baynes, the original illustrator · The French editions of Narnia · Lewis's sources of inspiration · Sub-creation: Lewis, Tolkien and the art of inventing worlds.

To go further: C.S. Lewis's favourite reading · A commented bibliography: reading about Narnia and about Lewis.

The pages devoted to his major works (The Screwtape Letters, the Space Trilogy, Till We Have Faces, Mere Christianity…), to the places of his life and to each of the Inklings are in preparation.

See also

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