C.S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis was the most widely read Christian writer of the twentieth century and one of the most versatile English literary figures since Samuel Johnson — a man who achieved distinction as a medievalist and Renaissance scholar at Oxford and Cambridge, as a novelist and writer of children’s fantasy, and as a popular theologian and apologist for the Christian faith, producing in each mode work of such quality and such reach that his combined readership has been estimated at over 200 million.

Belfast and Oxford

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898, the son of a solicitor. His mother died when he was nine, and the loss — which he later described as the permanent emotional fact of his life — gave his work its characteristic preoccupation with longing, loss, and the search for a home beyond this world. He was educated at various English schools (miserably, on the whole) and then tutored privately by W. T. Kirkpatrick, a rigorous logician who taught him to think with the precision that distinguishes all his writing.

He attended University College, Oxford, served briefly as a second lieutenant in the First World War (he was wounded at the Battle of Arras in 1918), and returned to Oxford, where he was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College in 1925. He remained at Oxford until 1954, when he accepted the newly created chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge.

The Conversion

Lewis was an atheist in his youth — vehemently so — and his conversion to Christianity in 1931 was the defining event of his intellectual life. The conversion was partly the result of conversations with J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, who argued that the Christian story was the “true myth” — the myth that had actually happened. Lewis described the experience in Surprised by Joy (1955): “I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

The Theological Works

The Screwtape Letters (1942) was Lewis’s most original theological work — a series of letters from a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter, advising him on how to corrupt his human “patient.” The device was brilliantly simple: by inverting the perspective (God is “the Enemy,” Hell is “Our Father’s House”), Lewis made the psychology of temptation and self-deception vivid and concrete.

Mere Christianity (1952) — based on BBC radio talks during the war — was his most systematic and most influential work of apologetics. Lewis argued for the existence of God from the moral law, defended the central doctrines of Christianity (the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Trinity), and presented the Christian life as a practical programme for human transformation. The book has sold tens of millions of copies and remains the single most widely read work of Christian apologetics.

The Problem of Pain (1940) and A Grief Observed (1961) — the latter written after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman — addressed the question of suffering from opposite directions: the first philosophically, the second experientially.

The Chronicles of Narnia

The seven Narnia books (1950–1956) — beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — are among the most widely read children’s books in the English language. They combined elements of medieval romance, classical mythology, and Christian allegory into a secondary world whose appeal has proved remarkably durable. Aslan, the great Lion who is the Christ-figure of Narnia, and the Pevensie children who discover the wardrobe that leads to a magical land have become permanent figures in the imagination of English-speaking childhood.

The Space Trilogy

Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945) constituted Lewis’s science fiction trilogy — novels that used interplanetary travel as a vehicle for theological and philosophical argument. Perelandra, set on Venus, was the most successful: a retelling of the temptation and fall set in a paradisal world of floating islands.

The Scholarship

Lewis’s academic work has been somewhat overshadowed by his popular writing, but it was of permanent importance. The Allegory of Love (1936) was a groundbreaking study of the medieval allegorical love tradition. A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942) rescued Milton’s epic from modernist hostility. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954) was his contribution to the Oxford History of English Literature.

Collecting Lewis

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Geoffrey Bles, 1950) in first edition with Pauline Baynes dust jacket is the primary target and commands substantial prices. The Screwtape Letters (Bles, 1942) and Mere Christianity (Bles, 1952) are also highly sought. The Space Trilogy (John Lane/Bodley Head, 1938–1945) is collected as a set. The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1936) is the key scholarly title. UK first editions (Bles, Bodley Head) are strongly preferred over American editions.