Who Is C. S. Lewis?
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Born in Belfast, Ireland in 1898, C. S. Lewis was a British scholar and author best known for his beloved children’s series The Chronicles of Narnia, including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, considered the most popular children’s book of the twentieth century. He was also an articulate theologian who wrote the celebrated apologetic work Mere Christianity based on a series of BBC radio talks given during World War II, as well as the popular satire The Screwtape Letters. As a tutor at Oxford University and later as Chair of Medieval Studies at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he published various works of literary criticism that remain standard reading today.
Lewis’s lectures and writings touched the lives of millions during World War II and the decades that followed. One of those people was the American poet Joy Gresham, whom Lewis eventually married late in life. Their love story is chronicled in the 1993 motion picture Shadowlands starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
Among C.S. Lewis’ friends was J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, who finished that epic work largely due to Lewis’s affirmation of its worthiness. Both were involved in an informal literary discussion group called The Inklings, which included Owen Barfield and Charles Williams.
C. S. Lewis’s books have never been out of print and are still bestsellers today, with wide appeal to people of all ages within both the secular and sacred communities. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, have been adapted to major motion pictures, and more movies are expected to follow: www.narnia.com.